Severe hypertriglyceridemia in a subject with disturbed life style and poor glycemic control without recurrence of acute pancreatitis: a case report.

BACKGROUND: Hypertriglyceridemia is often observed as the result of lipid abnormality and frequently associated with other lipid and metabolic disorders. Aggravation of hypertriglyceridemia is caused by various conditions. However, severe hypertriglyceridemia is usually induced by an addition of some secondary clinical conditions such as uncontrolled type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and obesity with insulin resistance. CASE PRESENTATION: A 40-year-old man with 4-year history of dyslipidemia and T2DM visited after his interruption of therapy for about 1.5 years. His past history was acute pancreatitis. His life style was markedly disturbed, and he had a lot of risk factors for hypertriglyceridemia. Surprisingly, his serum triglyceride level was as high as 16,900 mg/dL. His aggravation and remission of hypertriglyceridemia were closely associated with the alteration of RLP-cholesterol levels in dyslipidemia and glycoalbumin and ketone body levels in T2DM. CONCLUSION: We report very severe hypertriglyceridemia, which seemed to be caused by markedly disturbed life style and poorly controlled T2DM. Total therapy with diet and drug for each disease is very important for the improvement of very severe hypertriglyceridemia. This case report suggests that very severe hypertriglyceridemia alone does not necessarily bring out acute pancreatitis, although it is very important to check pancreatitis markers in such a situation.