Estimation of 26-hydroxycholesterol in serum by high-performance liquid chromatography and its measurement in patients with atherosclerosis

Abstract

A method for analysing 26-hydroxycholesterol (260HC) in serum and tissue samples using solid phase extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography is reported. This procedure was used to measure the levels of 260HC in the sera of apparently healthy subjects and of 18 patients with angiographically proven atherosclerosis. Sixteen of the patients had levels within or below the range detected in the apparently healthy subjects (125–294 ng/ml), indicating that high 260HC levels cannot be a major factor in the development of atherosclerosis. However, when the patients and the normal subjects were combined in a group, there was a significant positive correlation (r = 0.5, P < 0.01) between serum cholesterol and serum 260HC, and that correlation approached significance for each of the individual groups (P = 0.06 for each group). These results suggest that there is an association between cholesterol and 260HC levels in human serum.