High Sensitive C Reactive Protein and the Calculated Framingham Coronary Heart Disease Risk Score in a Selected Population of Sri Lanka

High sensitive C reactive protein and the calculated Framingham Coronary Heart Disease Risk Score

Abstract

Recently, the inflammatory marker, high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) has attracted clinical attention as a novel risk factor for Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) due to the immerging relationship between inflammation and atheroma.

Objective: To assess the correlation between hsCRP and the risk of CHD derived from Framingham Coronary Heart Risk Score (FCRS) in a selected population of Sri Lanka.

Methods: A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted with 115 middle aged (40-65years) individuals of University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka. Their baseline characteristics such as age, gender, smoking status, body mass index (BMI), blood pressure levels, cholesterol levels and status of diabetes were obtained and FCRS was calculated. Levels of hsCRP were measured by using photometric technique.

Results: The median hsCRP level of the participants was 1.10mg/L. 54.3% of the participants had high levels (>1mg/L) of hsCRP. Among overweight individuals 64.8% had high levels of hsCRP. Other traditional risk factors measured did not showed any significant correlation with hsCRP. Also, no significant correlation was found between hsCRP and FCRS.

Conclusions: The median hsCRP value for Sri Lankan population was lower than that of the Western population. The findings of the study indicated that hsCRP could not be used as a single indicator to predict the risk of Cardio Vascular Diseases (CVD) instead of FCRS and other traditional risk factors.