Effects of cholesterol-lowering treatments on oxidative modification of plasma intermediate density lipoprotein plus low density lipoprotein fraction in Type 2 diabetic patients.

To investigate the normalization of enhanced oxidative modification of the lipoprotein such as increased lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC) and lipid hydroperoxide (LPO) contents in diabetic subjects, we studied the effect of cholesterol-lowering treatment on those parameters in 24 hypercholesterolemic Type 2 diabetic patients. Those patients were randomly assigned to two treatment groups, such as 12 patients treated with pravastatin 10 mg daily and 12 patients treated with probucol 500 mg daily for 8 weeks. Characteristics of the patients including age, gender, body mass index (BMI), smoking habit, modality of diabetic treatment and the glycemic control state were comparable between the two groups. LPC content in the lipoprotein fractions obtained from 24 patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus was significantly higher than that of non-diabetic control subjects. The abnormality was improved to the control level after a significant improvement of serum cholesterol levels following 8 week-treatments with either probucol or pravastatin without any change in glycemic control (P < 0.025). Furthermore, increased LPO content in the lipoprotein fraction in those diabetics was also significantly (P < 0.0025) improved by the probucol treatment and tended to be improved by pravastatin treatment (P = 0.06). LPC contents in the lipoprotein fraction was positively correlated with LPO contents before cholesterol-lowering treatments (r = 0.41, P < 0.05). These results indicate that cholesterol-lowering treatments effectively reduce oxidative modification of the lipoprotein fraction containing intermediate density lipoprotein (IDL) and low density lipoprotein (LDL) in hypercholesterolemic Type 2 diabetic patients.