Severely elevated serum triglycerides in a case of heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia with the 317 cysteine to serine mutation in the LDL receptor gene.

Abstract

We present a case of a 43-year-old Japanese man with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) with severely elevated serum triglycerides (TG). He drank large quantities of alcohol but had no endocrinological disorder or diabetes mellitus. He had a recurrent, acute pancreatitis. His fasting serum total cholesterol (TC), TG, and HDL-C levels and an apolipoprotein E genotype of E3/E3 suggested a diagnosis of type V hyperlipidemia. Yet, the patient had bilateral Achilles tendinous xanthomata, which prompted us to conduct a gene analysis for the LDL receptor, and this revealed the heterozygous form of the 317 cysteine to serine mutation, demonstrating that this was a case of FH. We recommend that physicians consider the existence of FH, even in hyperlipidemic subjects with lipid profiles far from those typical of FH, whenever a patient has tendinous xanthomata.