Association of high sensitive C-reactive protein (hsCRP) with established cardiovascular risk factors in the Indian population

Introduction: Inflammation, the key regulator of C-reactive protein (CRP) synthesis, plays a pivotal role in atherothrombotic cardiovascular disease. Methods: High sensitivity CRP (hsCRP) analysis was carried out in randomly selected 600 individuals from the sentinel surveillance study in Indian industrial population (SSIP). The hsCRP was measured quantitatively by turbid metric test using kits from SPINREACT, Spain. We analyzed the association between hsCRP and traditional CVD risk factors in this sub-sample. Results: Complete risk factor data and CRP levels were available from 581/600 individuals. One half (51.2%) of the study subjects were males. Mean age of the study group was 39.2 +/- 11.2 years. The Pearson correlation coefficients were in the range of 0.12 for SBP (p = 0.004) to 0.55 for BMI (p < 0.001). The linear regression coefficients ranged from 0.01 for SBP, PG and TC (p < 0.001) to 0.55 for log(e)TAG (p < 0.001) after adjustment for age, sex and education. The mean of log(e)hsCRP significantly increased (P < 0.001) from individuals with <= 1 risk factors (-0.50) to individuals with three or more risk factors (0.60). In the multivariate model, the odds ratios for elevated CRP (CRP >= 2.6 mg/dl) were significantly elevated only in females in comparison to males (1.63, 95% CI; 1.02-2.58), overweight individuals in comparison to normal weight individuals (3.90, 95% CI; 2.34-6.44, p < 0.001), and abdominal obese individuals (1.62, 95% CI; 1.02-2.60, p = 0.04) in comparison to non-obese individuals. Conclusion: Clinical measurements of adiposity (body mass index and abdominal obesity) correlate well and can be surrogate for systemic inflammatory state of individuals.