Dietary Fat and High-Density Lipoprotein (HDL) Metabolism-Effect of Carbohydrate and Fat Intake

The investigators will study the kinetics of multiple types of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) in humans under two strictly controlled dietary conditions, high unsaturated fat and high carbohydrate, in 20 individuals with low HDL cholesterol and overweight or obesity. The participants will be given the controlled diets for 4 weeks in a randomized crossover design. They will be admitted to the Brigham \& Women's Hospital Center for Clinical Investigation (CCI) the morning of Day 28 when they will be infused intravenously with a stable isotope tracer, trideuterated (D3), leucine for 10 minutes as a bolus. Blood will be sampled in the hospital through 24 hours, and thereafter at the ambulatory clinical center throughout 94 hours. HDL subtypes will be prepared in Dr. Sacks's laboratory at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and analyzed for content of lipids and proteins, and for incorporation of the tracer into apolipoprotein A-I, the principal protein of HDL. These data will be studied by interactive modeling to a multi-compartment model of human HDL physiology that best fits the observed data. The model will yield HDL metabolic rates during unsaturated fat and carbohydrate-rich diets which will be tested for statistical significance.