Higher Lipophilic Index Indicates Higher Risk of Coronary Heart Disease in Postmenopausal Women

AbstractFatty acids (FAs) are essential components of cell membranes and play an integral role in membrane fluidity. The lipophilic index [LI, defined as the sum of the products between FA levels and melting points ( °C), divided by the total amount of FA:\({\text{LI}} = \frac{{\mathop \sum \nolimits_{k} [{\text{fatty acid}} \times {\text{melting point}}]}}{{\mathop \sum \nolimits_{k} {\text{fatty acid}} }}\)] is thought to reflect membrane and lipoprotein fluidity and may be associated with the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). Therefore, we examined the associations of dietary and plasma phospholipid (PL) LI with CHD risk among postmenopausal women. We determined dietary LI for the cohort with completed baseline food frequency questionnaires and free of prevalent cardiovascular diseases in the Women ’s Health Initiative (WHI) observational study (N = 85,563). We additionally determined plasma PL LI in a matched case-control study (N = 2428) nested within the WHI observational cohort study. Cox proportional hazard regression and multivariable conditional logistic regression were used to calculate HRs/ORs for CHD risk between quartiles of LI after adjusting for potential sources of confounding and selection bias. Higher dietar y LI in the cohort study and plasma PL LI in the case-control study were significantly associated with increased risk of CHD: HR = 1.18 (95% CI 1.07–1.31,P for trend<0.01) and OR  = 1.76 (95% CI 1.33–2.33,P for trend<0.01) compa...
Source: Lipids - Category: Lipidology Source Type: research