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Objective: To study the effects of palm oil (PO) and egg consumption (E) on plasma lipoproteins. Design: Randomized crossover trial. Setting: Free-living subjects. Subjects: Twenty-eight healthy male students aged 20 -34 y. Interventions: Four typical Colombian diets (10 878 kJ=day; 57% energy in carbohydrates, 12% energy in proteins and 31% energy in fats) were consumed for 4 weeks. The HPOLC diet was high in PO (8.8% energy as palmitic acid, PA) and low in eggs (181.2 mg=kJ of dietary cholesterol, DC); the HPOHC diet was high in PO and high in eggs (866.1 mg=kJ of DC); the MPOMC diet was moderate in PO (6.3% energy as PA) and moderate in eggs (581.6 mg=kJ of DC); and the LOPOMC diet had no PO and was moderate in eggs (543.9 mg=kJ of DC). Main outcome: Total (TC), low density (LDL-c), and high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c), and triacylglycerols (TAG) were measured on a pool of three fasting blood samples collected in consecutive days the last week of each diet. Results: Comparison of the HPOHC and HPOLC diets showed increases in TC and LDL-c of 0.21 (P ¼ 0.01), and 0.16 mmol=l (P ¼ 0.05). Comparison of LOPOMC and MPOMC diets showed increases in TC and LDL-c of 0.39 (P < 0.001), and 0.38 mmol=l (P < 0.001), respectively. No significant changes in HDL-c or TAG were observed. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that non-extreme short-term changes in PO and DC consumption lead to significant elevations in plasma TC and LDL-c.

Increased dispersion of QT interval in the 12-lead ECG have been proposed as risk factor of ventricular arrhythmias in post myocardial infarction (post-MI) patients, but its sensitivity and specifity is low for diagnosis and/or prognosis. We evaluate dispersion in other ventricular activity intervals, in order to determine whether they improve the separation between 15 normal subjects and 15 post-MI patients compared with QT dispersion. All the interval ventricular activity dispersions measured in the Frank's orthogonal leads (XYZ) are larger in post-MI patients than in normal subjects, but the differences are significant only for JTpeak (JTp) dispersion (p = 0.03). Therefore JTp dispersion could improve the identification of post-MI patients with risk of ventricular arrhythmias.