Abstract
We examined short-term and long-term repeatability (reliability) of the fatty acid (FA) composition of plasma phospholipids and cholesterol esters (CEs). For short-term reliability, fasting blood samples of 34 subjects were collected three times, 2 wk apart, and in 24 subjects duplicate samples were collected during each visit. For long-term reliability, two fasting samples were collected in 50 subjects ≃3 y apart. In both phospholipids and CEs, short-term and long-term reliability coefficients were > 0.65 for the major plasma FAs (16:0, 18:0, 18: 2n-6, and 20:4n-6), with the exception of 18:1n- 9, but were generally lower for FAs that compose < 1% of total FAs. Reliability tended to be better for CEs than for phospholipids. Method variability was small (< 5% of total variability for most FAs), indicating that biological and dietary variability contribute most to total variability. Plasma FA measurement warrants consideration as a biochemical marker of diet in epidemiologic studies.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 572-578 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | American Journal of Clinical Nutrition |
Volume | 62 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 1995 |
Keywords
- Fatty acids
- cholesterol esters
- phospholipids
- plasma
- reliability