Relation between serum cholesterol and hematocrit.

To the Editor. —In 1962, Burch and DePasquale studied the relationship between hematocrit and myocardial infarction and reported that the mean hematocrit in 100 patients with acute myocardial infarction was significantly higher than that in 100 control subjects. 1 In 1967, Rifkind and Gale observed that hypolipidemia is a common finding in patients with chronic anemia and commented that in underdeveloped countries where anemia is common, there is also a low incidence of ischemic heart disease. 2 In 1972, Bottiger and Carlson in a study of 2458 healthy nonanemic subjects detected a positive correlation between hemoglobin levels and serum cholesterol and triglyceride levels. 3 Due to the recent interest in serum cholesterol levels, we studied the relationship between pretreatment serum cholesterol and hematocrit levels in 200 male patients from our hypertension clinic. As shown in the Figure, we found a weak ( r = 0.3) but significant ( P