Separation of plasma high-density lipoprotein subclasses by a combined precipitation method using polyethylene glycol 6000 and dextran sulphate.

A fast and cheap precipitation method for the separation of HDL subclasses been evaluated. It starts with precipitation of apo-B containing lipoproteins with PEG-6000 after which HDL2 is precipitated with dextran sulphate-Mg2+. A concentration of 0.72 g/l dextran sulphate was found to be suitable for the separation of HDL subclasses. HDL subclasses obtained by precipitation gave proper density profiles at density gradient centrifugations. The correlations between results obtained by this method and by sequential and density gradient centrifugation are good, r = 0.99 and 0.72, respectively.