Computational Lipidology: Predicting Lipoprotein Density Profiles in Human Blood Plasma

Monitoring cholesterol levels is strongly recommended to identify patients at risk for myocardial infarction. However, clinical markers beyond “bad” and “good” cholesterol are needed to precisely predict individual lipid disorders. Our work contributes to this aim by bringing together experiment and theory. We developed a novel computer-based model of the human plasma lipoprotein metabolism in order to simulate the blood lipid levels in high resolution. Instead of focusing on a few conventionally used predefined lipoprotein density classes (LDL, HDL), we consider the entire protein and lipid composition spectrum of individual lipoprotein complexes. Subsequently, their distribution over density (which equals the lipoprotein profile) is calculated. As our main results, we (i) successfully reproduced clinically measured lipoprotein profiles of healthy subjects; (ii) assigned lipoproteins to narrow density classes, named high-resolution density sub-fractions (hrDS), revealing heterogeneous lipoprotein distributions within the major lipoprotein classes; and (iii) present model-based predictions of changes in the lipoprotein distribution elicited by disorders in underlying molecular processes. In its present state, the model offers a platform for many future applications aimed at understanding the reasons for inter-individual variability, identifying new sub-fractions of potential clinical relevance and a patient-oriented diagnosis of the potential molecular causes for individual dyslipidemia

Er þörf forgangsröðunar í heilbrigðismálum? [ritstjórnargrein]

Neðst á síðunni er hægt að nálgast greinina í heild sinni með því að smella á hlekkinn View/OpenForgangsröðun í heilbrigðiskerfinu hefur verið nokkuð vinsælt umræðuefni undanfarið. Ég hef verið meðal þeirra sem hef gagnrýnt þessa umræðu fyrir að vera ómarkvissa, takmarkaða og oft á tíðum ruglandi (1). Færa má rök að því að heppilegt sé að skoða forgangsröðun í heilbrigðiskerfinu eins og hún eigi sér stað á nokkrum þrepum. Ástæðan er sú að umfjöllunarefni, rök, vandamál, aðferðir og lausnir eru ekki endilega þau sömu á öllum þessum þrepum. Forgangsröðun í heilbrigðiskerfinu hefur venjulega verið skipt í þrjú stig eða þrep sem eru; a) forgangsröðun í meðferð tiltekinna einstaklinga, b) forgangsröðun innan stofnana eða landsvæða og c) forgangsröðun fyrir þjóðina alla