Plasma triglyceride-rich lipoprotein remnants as a risk factor of ‘Pokkuri disease’

• Published in: Legal medicine (Tokyo, Japan) Japan), 2001-06, Vol.3 (2), p.84-94
• Main Authors: Takeichi, Sanae, Nakajima, Yasuhiro, Yukawa, Nobuhiro, Saito, Takeshi, Seto, Yoshihisa, Huang, Xiu-Lin, Kusakabe, Takahiko, Jin, Zheng-Bin, Hasegawa, Iwao, Nakano, Takamitsu, Saniabadi, Abby, Adachi, Masakazu, Ohara, Naoki, Wang, Tao, Nakajima, Katsuyuki
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Pokkuri disease; Remnant-like particles; Sudden coronary death; Triglyceride-rich lipoprotein remnants
• ISSN: 1344-6223; 1873-4162
• DOI: 10.1016/S1344-6223(01)00010-4

In our recent report, it remained unclear whether or not triglyceride-rich lipoprotein remnants (RLP) were associated with the risk of sudden coronary death in younger cases without coronary atherosclerosis that were detected in about 10% of all sudden coronary death cases in Japan. These cases were categorized as ‘origin unknown, but suspected to be due to coronary spasm’, the so called ‘pokkuri disease’ in Japan. The present study population consisted of 108 sudden death cases without coronary atherosclerosis [(pokkuri disease n=57) and non-cardiac sudden death (control n=51)] aged 20–69 years from Kanagawa prefecture in Japan. All individuals had died suddenly and unexpectedly, most had no significant history of medical conditions including cardiac symptoms and had not taken medications prior to death according to their medical records. All the autopsies were performed within 12 h after death. Plasma total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), phospholipids, RLP-C and RLP-TG, VLDL-C, LDL-C, HDL-C, apolipoproteins A-I, A-II, B, C-II, C-III, E, Lp (a) and homocysteine were measured in postmortem plasma samples. The TG-rich lipoprotein remnants measured as RLP-C and RLP-TG were significantly higher in pokkuri disease compared with controls both in fasting and postprandial states ( P