About the Authors

Paul T. Williams

Affiliation Life Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, California, United States of America

Xue-Qiao Zhao

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Santica M. Marcovina

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Northwest Lipid Research Laboratories, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

B. Greg Brown

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Ronald M. Krauss

rkrauss@chori.org

Affiliation Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Oakland, California, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have the following interests. Drugs were supplied for this study by Upsher-Smith Laboratories and Merck. Merck is the manufacturer of Simvastatin and Upsher-Smith the manufacturer of Slo-Niacin and Niacor. PT Williams has provided consulting serves to Celera. XQ Zhao has received grants, supplies, served as a consultant, or received honoraria from Pfizer, Abbott, Merck, and Daiichi Sankyo. RM Krauss received research grants from Merck, Roche, and Quest Diagnostics, serves on the Merck Global Atherosclerosis Advisory Board and as a consultant for Roche, Genentech, and Celera. RM Krauss also receives royalties for patents of gradient gel electrophoresis and ion mobility analyses of lipoprotein subtractions. There are no further patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: PTW RMK BGB XQZ SM. Performed the experiments: BGB XQZ RMK SM. Analyzed the data: PTW.