HDL-inflammatory index correlates with poor outcome in hemodialysis patients.

Oxidative stress and cardiovascular disease are risk factor of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) on maintenance hemodialysis. We used the fluorescence of low-density lipoprotein as an index of its proinflammatory potential to examine any role that high-density lipoprotein (HDL) might have in promoting this effect. The total body fat of the patients was measured by means of near-infrared interactance and their quality of life by means of SF36 questionnaires. In 189 randomly selected patients, followed for 30 months, HDL was found to be significantly anti-inflammatory but with a large standard deviation. Fully 17% of the patients had a decidedly proinflammatory index along with inferior SF36 scores. The patients were divided into 10% increments of total body fat percentages up to 40%. HDL was found to be progressively proinflammatory the higher the body fat content. Patients with a higher HDL proinflammatory index had a higher 30-month adjusted hazard ratio for death than those whose HDL were seen to be anti-inflammatory. Our findings suggest an important role of inflammatory HDL in patients with CKD leading to poor outcome.

Purification and partial characterization of a cholesterol oxidase from Streptomyces fradiae.

An extracellular cholesterol oxidase from Streptomyces fradiae (PTCC 1121) was purified in one step using DEAE-Sepharose. The purified enzyme had a molecular weight of 60 KDa. The optimum pH and temperature for activity was found to be 7 and 70 degrees C, respectively. This cholesterol oxidase was stable in pHs between 4-10 at 4 degrees C until 4 h. Thermal stability experiments showed that it has high stability and retains its full activity at 50 degrees C for 90 min. K(m) value for cholesterol oxidase was obtained to be about 7.06 x 10(-)(5) Mol.