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(Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. 2002;22:1512.)
© 2002 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorials

C-Reactive Protein, Subclinical Atherosclerosis, and Risk of Cardiovascular Events

Gavin J. Blake; Paul M. Ridker

From the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and the Cardiovascular Division, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.

Correspondence to Dr Paul M. Ridker, Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 900 Commonwealth Ave East, Boston, MA 02215. E-mail pridker@partners.org

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

C-reactive protein (CRP) is an independent determinant of risk of stroke among both men and women. For instance, in the Framingham Study, the relative risk for future stroke for the highest quartile of CRP compared with the lowest was 2.0 for men and 2.7 for women.¹ The association between CRP and risk of stroke among men and women in this cohort persisted after adjustment for age, smoking, total cholesterol: HDL cholesterol ratio, systolic blood pressure, and diabetes.¹ Similarly, in the Physicians’ Health Study, men in the highest quartile of CRP also had a 2-fold increased risk of stroke compared with the lowest quartile,² while in the Women’s Health Study women in the top quartile of CRP had a more than 3-fold increased risk of stroke.³

See page 1662

While the association between CRP and hard cardiovascular events seems robust, the relationship between CRP and subclinical atherosclerosis is less clear.^4–8 Thus, the report by Wang and colleagues⁹ regarding CRP and carotid atherosclerosis in this issue of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, and a recently published companion report from the same group regarding CRP and coronary artery calcification,¹⁰ are valuable additions to this field.

In the present report, Wang and colleagues⁹ describe the association between CRP and carotid atherosclerosis as assessed by ultrasonography among 3173 men and women enrolled in the Framingham Offspring Study. Overall, they found that increasing levels of CRP were predictive of carotid stenosis (25%) in both crude and adjusted analyses. However, in analyses stratified by gender, . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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