Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Loss-Of-Function Variants In Endothelial Lipase Are A Cause Of Elevated Hdl Cholesterol In Humans, Andrew Edmondson, Robert Brown, Sekar Kathiresan, L. Cupples, Serkalem Demissie, Alisa Manning, Majken Jensen, Eric Rimm, Jian Wang, Amrith Rodrigues, Vaneeta Bamba, Sumeet Khetarpal, Megan Wolfe, Stephanie Derohannessian, Mingyao Li, Muredach Reilly, Jens Aberle, David Evans, Robert Hegele, Daniel Rader

Dr Robert Brown

Elevated plasma concentrations of HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) are associated with protection from atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Animal models indicate that decreased expression of endothelial lipase (LIPG) is inversely associated with HDL-C levels, and genome-wide association studies have identified LIPG variants as being associated with HDL-C levels in humans. We hypothesized that loss-of-function mutations in LIPG may result in elevated HDL-C and therefore performed deep resequencing of LIPG exons in cases with elevated HDL-C levels and controls with decreased HDL-C levels. We identified a significant excess of nonsynonymous LIPG variants unique to cases with elevated HDL-C. In vitro lipase activity assays demonstrated …