SERUM CHOLESTEROL VALUES FOR INFANTS AND CHILDREN

Because of the wide range of variation in the concentration of cholesterol in the blood serum of healthy adults,¹confirmed in the present study for children, sufficiently large numbers of subjects to justify statistical comparison are required to establish relatively small deviations from normal. This condition has not been met in most previous studies of serum cholesterol in children. Furthermore, the methods used for determination of cholesterol have been criticized severely, and no measurements of cholesterol fractions have been reported in most of these investigations. During the period between Jan. 1, 1934 and March 1, 1942 the accurate method of Schoenheimer and Sperry²or a modification thereof was employed in the Babies Hospital in a large series of determinations of serum cholesterol on infants and children in the first thirteen years of life. It is the purpose of this report to evaluate these data. The clinical histories of