evaluation of the lipid profile in type 2 diabetes mellitus patients in greece background diabetes mellitus dm is one of the most serious global health problems in greece dm constitutes a public health problem and is highly associated with decreasing levels of physical activity increasing obesity rates population ageing and unhealthy lifestyle and dietary behaviorsmaterials in this study we evaluated the sera from 800 type 2 diabetic patients recruited during a three year period of time and 200 age matched controls without any clinical history of diabetes for each subject we measured levels of fasting glucose glu total cholesterol tchol triglycerides trg high density lipoproteins hdlc and glycosylated hemoglobin ghba1c and calculated levels of low density lipoproteins ldlc the aims of our study were to find characteristics of lipid parameters in the population under study to find gender differences in the parameters to evaluate correlations between pairs of lipid parameters and to compare the lipid parameters between patients and healthy controls focusing on patient gender for this purpose we analyzed the data using descriptive statistics xsquare test logistic regression and roc curve analysisresults according to our results 700 of diabetic patients presented at least one lipid abnormality elevated ldlc elevated tchol elevated trg and reduced hdlc levels were noted in 2837 3637 3901 and 3012 of the patients respectively the combination of elevated trg and reduced hdlc was the most preva lent of the combined lipid abnormalities moreover there are statistically significant differences in the levels of hdlc tchol trg and glu between men and women in contrast no differences were observed in levels of ghba1cconclusions we identified an important linear relationship between ldlc and tchol ldlc 2869 tchol 075 adjusted r2 7696 finally we calculated optimal thresholds for glu and ghb1ac levels using two methodologies overall accuracy maximization or sensitivityspecificity minimization for the identification of patient from healthy controls differences in the optimal thresholds between men and women were not observed