[Direct quantitative determination of LDL cholesterol and HDL cholesterol using agarose gel electrophoresis]

The direct and quantitative determination of the main classes of the serum lipoproteins by means of a simple and reliable method is an urgent necessity for answering the numerous clinical questions. By precipitation of polyanions of the lipoproteins after electrophoretic separation in the agarosegel it is possible to determine sufficiently exactly and reproducibly their concentration without ultracentrifugation. For HDL- and LDL-cholesterol (beta-und alpha-lipoprotein cholesterol) a serial precision of 3 and 4%, respectively, and day,/day of 4 and 6%, respectively, was found. The methodology is described in detail and the problems of the establishment of the reference curves are particularly entered. In addition to this the determination of LDL- and HDL-cholesterol and beta- and alpha-lipoprotein cholesterol, respectively, was performed in sera of patients according to 3 and 4 variants, respectively, and these results were correlated with the densitometer surfaces of the beta- and alpha-lipoproteins. The correlation coefficients were between 0.94 and 0.99.