An evaluation of quantitative agarose-gel electrophoresis of serum lipoproteins.

The method of Hatch et al. (Hatch, F.T., Lindgren, F.T., Adamson, G.L., Jensen, L.C. and Wong, A.W. (1973) J. Lab. Clin. Med. 81, 946-960) of quantitative determination of serum lipoproteins has been compared with preparative ultracentrifugation and chemical analysis of the lipoprotein fractions and a good concordance was demonstrated. The replacement of the coefficients proposed by Hatch et al. by the ones derived from the present study does not bring about relevant changes of the results when the harmonic mean of two calibration factors, derived from serum cholesterol and triglycerides, is used, thus indicating that this method of calculation minimizes the effect of variation of the chemical composition of lipoproteins. The method is sufficiently reliable and reproducible for practical pruposes and is recommended as the standard method for the clinical laboratory.