Studies of the Importance of Interstitial Fluid in the Development of Cardiovascular Disease, an Expanded Study.

At a given level of serum cholesterol, patients with T2D have an increased risk of developing atherosclerosis compared with nondiabetic subjects.

In a previous study we showed that the interstitial fluid-to-serum gradient of LDL and VLDL cholesterol is reduced in T2D patients compared with healthy controls. This was not found for HDL cholesterol. However, the cholesterol transporting function of HDL particles from interstitial fluid from patients with T2D were lower than in healthy controls. We hypothesize that that the apo B-containing particles in T2D patients are more susceptible to be retained or consumed in the extravascular space.

We are to study if skin biopsies from T2D patients contain more cholesterol than biopsies from healthy controls. We hypothesize that samples from T2D patients are richer in cholesterol, which could explain why VLDL and LDL cholesterol are lower in relation to their plasma levels in T2D.