The purpose of the study was to evaluate a relationship between
HDL, triglyceride levels and insulinaemia in primary arterial
hypertension. The study population consisted of 60 men aged 32-68 years (mean age 50.87 years, s.d. 8.4) with
hypertension duration of 11.1 years (s.d. 6.4 years) who were compared with 60 normotensives matched for sex, age and BMI. We examined blood pressure, plasma
lipoprotein content, sum of
glucose and sum of insulinaemia (sum ins) during OGTT (oral
glucose tolerance test). OGTT revealed insulin secretion almost twice as high in hypertensives (P < 0.001 sum ins 11002 microU min/ml, s.d. 4846) than in normotensives (sum ins 6662 microU min/ml, s.d. 3099). Comparison of concentration of selected VLDL components shows that hypertensives were characterised by markedly higher concentration of
triglycerides (1.46 mmol/L, s.d. 0.87 in hypertensives and 1.04 mmol/L, s.d. 0.54 in normotensives), free and esterified
cholesterol and
protein, including
apolipoprotein B than normotensives. It was also found that hypertensives had higher levels of apo CIII0 and lower levels of CIII1 VLDL than normotensives. Hypertensive patients showed also a higher frequency of
apo E2 isoforms (three-fold) and
apo E4 isoforms (two-fold) than healthy subjects. No changes were detected in the composition of
LDL and HDL between the groups. Analysing the discriminating ability of biochemical parameters chosen in a step-wise manner it was found that sum ins and HDL,
protein and
cholesterol concentrations were the factors most powerfully differentiating men with
hypertension from healthy subjects.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)