New Advances in Rapid Pretreatment for Small Dense LDL Cholesterol Measurement Using Shear Horizontal Surface Acoustic Wave (SH-SAW) Technology

Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease of the arteries associated with alterations in lipid and other metabolism and is a major cause of cardiovascular disease (CVD). LDL consists of several subclasses with different sizes, densities, and physicochemical compositions. Small dense LDL (sd-LDL) is a subclass of LDL. There is growing evidence that sd-LDL-C is associated with CVD risk, metabolic dysregulation, and several pathophysiological processes. In this study, we present a straightforward membrane device filtration method that can be performed with simple laboratory methods to directly determine sd-LDL in serum without the need for specialized equipment. The method consists of three steps: first, the precipitation of lipoproteins with magnesium harpin; second, the collection of effluent from a 100 nm filter; and third, the quantification of sd-LDL-ApoB in the effluent with an SH-SAW biosensor. There was a good correlation between ApoB values obtained using the centrifugation (y = 1.0411x + 12.96, r = 0.82, n = 20) and filtration (y = 1.0633x + 15.13, r = 0.88, n = 20) methods and commercially available sd-LDL-C assay values. In addition to the filtrate method, there was also a close correlation between sd-LDL-C and ELISA assay values (y = 1.0483x − 4489, r = 0.88, n = 20). The filtration treatment method also showed a high correlation with LDL subfractions and NMR spectra ApoB measurements (y = 2.4846x + 4.637, r = 0.89, n = 20). The presence of sd-LDL-ApoB in the effluent was also confirmed by ELISA assay. These results suggest that this filtration method is a simple and promising pretreatment for use with the SH-SAW biosensor as a rapid in vitro diagnostic (IVD) method for predicting sd-LDL concentrations. Overall, we propose a very sensitive and specific SH-SAW biosensor with the ApoB antibody in its sensitive region to monitor sd-LDL levels by employing a simple delay-time phase shifted SH-SAW device. In conclusion, based on the demonstration of our study, the SH-SAW biosensor could be a strong candidate for the future measurement of sd-LDL.