Fig. 1.

Scatter plot/heat map of the experimental relationship between the diameter of the HDL particles determined by NMR spectroscopy (d_{avg, NMR}) and the corresponding HDL-C/ApoA-I ratio from the WHS study (n=26,772). Data points (black dots) represent baseline values from individual subjects. Due to overlap of the points, these appear as black horizontal lines corresponding to the measured values of d_{avg, NMR}, e.g., 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, etc. The color scale on the right vertical axis (heat map) indicates the number of data points within the unit rectangles (width 0.025; height 0.1 nm) that are adjacent to each other on each horizontal line. The pink/red “cigar shape” region corresponds to the highest density of data points in the WHS population. Blue diamonds represent the median HDL-C/ApoA-I ratio for data points with the same value of d_{avg, NMR}; horizontal blue line-segments represent the corresponding interquartile ranges. The dashed black line is based on a regression analysis of the HDL-C/ApoA-I ratios vs. the d_{avg, NMR} values. The equation is given by: d_{avg, NMR} = 4.66 + 12.31 HDL-C/ApoA-I. See Experimental Methods (Statistical Analysis of WHS Data) for details.