RESUMEN
We investigated 190 healthy, unrelated and randomly selected, north-west Indian Punjabis (M:102; F:88) for paraoxonase (PON1) polymorphism by dual substrate method and also determined lipid variables i.e., total cholesterol (TC), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL), low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL) and triglycerides (TG) in them to determine any relationship between PON1 activity, PON1 phenotypes and lipids. The basal plasma paraoxonase (PON) activity, and PON activity in presence of 1 Mol NaCl (salt activated paraoxonase i.e., SAP) were estimated by using paraoxon as substrate whereas the, phenyl acetate esterase (A) activity was estimated by using phenylacetate as substrate. Based on the ratio of SAP/A activity, three distinct phenotypes of PON1 could be determined with gene frequencies of PON*A (low activity) and PON*B (high activity) allele being 0.847 and 0.153 respectively. In the whole population on partial correlation after normalising the variables and after adjusting the lipids for age and body mass index (BMI), a significant negative correlation was observed between SAP/A ratio and TC (r = -0.290; P < 0.01) and LDL (r = -0.154; P < 0.05). However, on analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) after normalizing the lipid variables and adjusting these for age and body mass index (BMI), no significant difference could be observed in lipid profile of these three phenotypes. The lack of a significant relationship between lipids and PON1 phenotypes, suggests that PON phenotype does not significantly influence the lipid profile in north-west Indian Punjabis. However, a significant negative correlation between the PON activity and TC and LDL suggests that low PON activity could be a risk factor for atherosclerosis in these subjects.