Serum High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol is Significantly Associated with the Presence and Severity of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension: A Retrospective Cross-Sectional Study

To explore the relationship between serum high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels and the presence and severity of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH).

A total of 177 patients with PAH and 103 patients without pulmonary hypertension (PH) were enrolled in this study. All patients underwent right heart catheterization (RHC) for diagnosing and assessing the severity of PAH. Demographics, comorbidities, and laboratory data including serum HDL-C levels were collected.

Plasma HDL-C levels in patients with PAH were significantly lower compared with patients without PH (1.08 ± 0.36 vs 1.49 ± 0.36, p < 0.001). HDL-C levels positively correlated with cardiac output (r = 0.360, p < 0.001), cardiac index (r = 0.337, p < 0.001), and mixed venous oxygen saturation (r = 0.426, p < 0.001), and negatively with mean pulmonary arterial pressure (r = − 0.529, p < 0.001), right atrial pressure (r = − 0.421, p < 0.001), and pulmonary vascular resistance (r = − 0.583, p < 0.001). Multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated that HDL-C was a significant independent predictor of PAH (OR 0.042, 95% CI 0.006–0.304, p = 0.002). The receiver operating characteristic curve analysis showed that the optimal cutoff value of the serum HDL-C concentration for predicting PAH was 1.32 mmol/L, with a sensitivity of 83.6% and a specificity of 72.8% (area under the curve 0.803, 95% confidence interval 0.750–0.856, p < 0.001).

Serum HDL-C is a simple biomarker that might be used for prediction and assessment of PAH in Chinese Han ethnicity, and the mechanism underlying the association needs further study.