Association between Serum Copper and Serum Lipids in Adults

As an essential trace element, copper has been considered to play an important role in lipid metabolism. However, the associations of serum copper with lipid concentration and dyslipidemia are still controversial.

We used the 2011-2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to examine the relationship between serum copper and lipid concentration among participants aged 20 years and older. Multivariate linear regression was conducted to estimate the differences in the level of total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. Logistic regression was conducted to examine the association between serum copper and the risk of dyslipidemia.

A total of 2,678 subjects were eligible for our analyses. The multivariable adjusted average differences (95% CIs) comparing the highest to the lowest copper tertile were 8.42 (1.45-15.38) mg/dL for TC, and 2.96 (0.02-5.90) mg/dL for HDL cholesterol. Compared with the lowest tertile of serum copper, participants had significantly higher risks of High-TC dyslipidemia (OR 1.46; 95% CI 1.02-2.08) in tertile 3 and High-LDL cholesterol dyslipidemia (OR 1.48; 95% CI 1.03-2.14) in tertile 2 after adjusting for covariates. In the stratified analyses, we found that the copper-dyslipidemia association was statistically significant in women and subjects younger than 45 years of age.

High serum copper was associated with elevated serum concentrations of TC and HDL cholesterol, and was associated with increased risks of High-TC and High-LDL cholesterol dyslipidemia. However, the real association between serum copper and serum lipids should be verified in larger prospective cohort studies in -future.