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Obesity-related correlation between C-reactive protein and the calculated 10-y Framingham Coronary Heart Disease Risk Score

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

To clarify the role of body mass index (BMI, kg/m2) adjustment in predictive models for cardiovascular events that add high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) to the 10-y Framingham Coronary Heart Disease Risk Score (FCRS).

DESIGN:

A cross-sectional study in a group of apparently healthy individuals.

SUBJECTS:

In all, 1512 apparently healthy individuals (955 men and 557 women) at a respective age of 49.7±10.6 and 50.6±9.6 y.

RESULTS:

The Pearson correlation between hs-CRP and the calculated 10-y FCRS was lower when adjusted for BMI. This reduction was especially noted in women where it dropped from 0.247 to 0.09. The dominant role of hs-CRP concentrations was also noted in a linear regression model, again, especially noted in women (drop of the standardized coefficient from 0.517 for BMI to 0.08 for the FCRS).

CONCLUSIONS:

The correlation between hs-CRP and the 10-y FCRS is partly related to the presence of obesity. We raise the possibility that the addition of BMI to the predictive model of FCRS might attenuate the cost-effectiveness of CRP measurements for this specific risk assessment.

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Correspondence to S Berliner.

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Rogowski, O., Shapira, I., Toker, S. et al. Obesity-related correlation between C-reactive protein and the calculated 10-y Framingham Coronary Heart Disease Risk Score. Int J Obes 29, 772–777 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ijo.0802939

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