We employed low-dose human endotoxemia to assess the effects of inflammation on HDL and RCT-related parameters in vivo. Endotoxemia induced remodelling of HDL with depletion of pre-尾1a HDL particles determined by 2-D gel electrophoresis (鈭?2.2 卤 9.3%at 24 h, p < 0.05) as well as small (鈭?3.0 卤 5.1%, p < 0.01, at 24 h) and medium (鈭?7.6 卤 8.0%at 16 h, p < 0.001) HDL estimated by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). This was associated with induction of class II secretory phospholipase A2 (鈭?6 fold increase) and suppression of lecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase activity (鈭?0.8 卤 3.4%at 24 h, p < 0.01) and cholesterol ester transfer protein mass (鈭?2.2 卤 6.8%at 24 h, p < 0.001). The HDL fraction, isolated following endotoxemia, had reduced capacity to efflux cholesterol in vitro from SR-BI and ABCA1, but not ABCG1 transporter cell models.
These data support the concept that 鈥渁therogenic-HDL dysfunction鈥?and impaired RCT occur in human inflammatory syndromes, largely independent of changes in plasma HDL-C and ApoA-I levels.