Relationship of paraoxonase and serum lipids in Taiwan

Paraoxonase (PON) is structurally associated with the high-density lipoprotein fraction of serum, suggesting a role for this enzyme in lipoprotein metabolism. In Chinese Singaporeans, triglycerides (TG) had significant positive correlation with PON but high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) did not. Our paper investigates the influence of PON on serum lipids under controlling confounding factors in Taiwanese. Blood samples and questionnaires were collected from 476 Taiwanese with no participant excluded for any reason. Cases were examined for biochemistry, PON, TG, cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and HDL-C. PON phenotypes were determined by Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. We compared median differences in PON, TG, TC, HDL-C and LDL-C between genders by means of the Wilcoxon Rank Sums test. Relationships among PON, TG, TC, HDL-C and LDL-C were represented by Pearson's correlation. A rank multiple regression analysis was also used to analyze the association between PON, TG, TC, HDL-C and LDL-C adjusted for age, gender and diabetes mellitus, since no uremia, acute myocardial infarction or peripheral neuropathy was present in our cases. Median TG and LDL-C were higher in males than in females, but median HDL-C was higher in females. For women and the total group, TC and HDL-C showed a significant positive correlation with PON. Only HDL-C showed a positive correlation with PON adjusted for age, gender and diabetes mellitus. PON is influenced by many confounding factors. Only after adjusting for the confounding factors in this study, HDL-C is positively correlated to PON like the structural relationship.