Direct determination of lipoprotein particle sizes and concentrations by ion mobility analysis.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Laboratory analytical method validation using serum samples
PubMed 18515257 · doi:10.1373/clinchem.2007.100586
What was done
The authors developed and validated a gas-phase differential electrophoretic macromolecular mobility-based method (ion mobility, or IM) to directly measure the size and concentration of lipoprotein particles across subfractions from small, dense HDL to large VLDL (particle diameter range 17.2-540.0 A). Serum samples underwent an ultracentrifugation step to remove albumin before a 2-minute IM scan, and particle counts across predetermined size ranges were correlated with standard cholesterol and apolipoprotein measurements.
What was found
Intra- and interassay coefficients of variation for LDL particle size were <1.0%, and for LDL and HDL particle subfraction measurements were <20%. Ion mobility-measured non-HDL correlated strongly with apolipoprotein B (r = 0.92).
Why it matters
Ion mobility provides a direct physical measurement of lipoprotein particle sizes and subclass concentrations across a broad size spectrum. This offers a standardized method for lipid profiling that can be evaluated in clinical cardiovascular studies.
Limits
The abstract does not report the number or characteristics of human serum samples tested. Clinical utility, hard cardiovascular outcomes, and comparative performance against other subfraction assays were not evaluated.
Cited by
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