Authors determined the plasma levels of total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, apoprotein B-100 (apo B-100), apoprotein A-I (apo A-I) and lipoprotein(a) in 202 (139 female and 63 male) randomized blood donors. The phenotypes of lipoprotein(a) were detected by SDS-polyacrylamide gelelectrophoresis and Western blotting. The average plasma total cholesterol concentration of this Hungarian population was 5.7 +/- 1.1 mmol/l. The other lipoprotein parameters were HDL-cholesterol: 1.36 +/- 0.04 mmol/l; and the apoprotein B-100 concentration: 70 +/- 17.4 mg/dl. In these parameters no difference between males and females could be found. The average plasma apoprotein A-I in females was 156.3 +/- 23.6 mg/dl and in males 143.8 +/- 26.8 mg/dl and the difference was statistically significant (p less than 0.01). The average lipoprotein(a) concentration of this population was 10.5 +/- 13.5 mg/dl and there was no significant difference between males and females (9.0 +/- 10.7 and 13.9 +/- 17.7 mg/dl, respectively). The distribution of plasma Lp(a) was highly skewed in the direction of low concentration values. In females a moderate bimodial distribution could be demonstrated. Documented by several authors lipoprotein(a) level higher than 30 mg/dl serves as an independent risk factor for atherosclerosis. In this population only 9.4% of subjects had lipoprotein(a) concentrations over this limit (5.9% female and 3.5% male). The relative alle frequency of different phenotypes showed the following distribution: B 0.007, S1 0.015, S2 0.154, S3 0.231, S4 0.230 and null 0.362. In this population the F phenotype could not be detected.