Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis in quantification of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol

Abstract

We evaluated a method for quantifying high-density lipoprotein cholesterol in plasma, based on electrophoretic migration of the prestained (with Sudan Black III) sample through a discontinuous polyacrylamide gel and densitometric integration of the stain associated with each class of lipoprotein. With this method, operations can be carried out on all types of lipoproteins over a broad range of concentrations. Overloading with very-low and low-density lipoproteins did not affect reliability within a wide range of HDL concentrations (0.45 to 16.60 mmol/L). Results for 22 individual plasma samples from normal and dyslipemic subjects correlated well with those by ultracentrifugal analysis (r = 0.96; Student's t = 0.90, p>0.30). We conclude that this method is reliable, sensitive, and accurate. It may be used for simultaneously typing dyslipoproteinemias and assaying HDL cholesterol.