Direct measurement of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol compared with the precipitation-based methods.

We compared the performance of the direct measurement for quantifying high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) with the precipitation-based method for HDL-C, using samples with a wide range of HDL-C concentrations (7-144 mg/dL). The coefficient of correlation for the two methods was 0.98 (n=500). Both methods were precise with a run-to-rum CV of < 4.4 per cent. By using direct measurement for HDL-C we can reduce errors which occurred in the precipitation-based method, especially from centrifugation and recovery of the supernatant. The direct measurement method strongly appears to successfully discriminate between the serum HDL fractions and completely measures the HDL-C.