[Investigations on physiological values of blood in industrial workers. Report 2. Serum lipid values]

In order to establish the physiological values of serum lipids in healthy workers, 1,728 workers aged 35 years and over (1,035 males and 693 females) were examined after the over-night fast. Serum total cholesterol and serum triglycerides were measured by enzyme method. High density lipoprotein-cholesterols were measured by precipitation method (heparin-Mn2+) and beta-lipoprotein also by precipitation method (heparin-Ca2+). Ratios of total cholesterols to HDL-cholesterols and beta-lipoproteins to HDL-cholesterols were calculated. The results obtained are as follows: (1) Frequency distributions of 4 sorts of lipid values and 2 indices fitted approximately to the log-normal distribution. (2) High positive correlation coefficients were found between three lipid measurements, i.e. total cholesterol, triglyceride and beta-lipoprotein, in both men and women. High positive correlation coefficient was found between two ratios, total cholesterol/HDL-cholesterol and beta-lipoprotein/HDL-cholesterol. (3) Geometric means and, 5-95th percentile values in bracket were 184.5 (135-253) mg/dl for total cholesterol in men, 185.4 (139-247) mg/dl for total cholesterol in women, 84.9 (38-188) mg/dl for triglyceride in men, 71.3 (40-126) mg/dl for triglyceride in women, 47.9 (28-81) mg/dl for HDL-cholesterol in men, 51.5 (33-80) mg/dl for HDL-cholesterol in women, 348.3 (211-577) mg/dl for beta-lipoprotein in men, 306.9 (193-489) mg/dl for beta-lipoprotein in women, 3.9 (2.3-6.6) for total cholesterol/HDL-cholesterol in men, 3.6 (2.3-5.7) for total cholesterol/HDL-cholesterol in women, 7.3 (3.6-14.6) for beta-lipoprotein/HDL cholesterol in men, and 6.0 (3.1-11.7) for beta-lipoprotein/HDL-cholesterol in women. (4) Group average values of total cholesterol, triglyceride, beta-lipoprotein, total cholesterol/HDL-cholesterol and beta-lipoprotein/HDL-cholesterol tended to increase with age in women. These differences by age were statistically significant. (5) Mean values of HDL-cholesterol were higher in women than in men in all age groups.