C-Reactive Protein, the Metabolic Syndrome, and Risk of Incident Cardiovascular Events

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Abstract
Background— The metabolic syndrome describes a high-risk population having 3 or more of the following clinical characteristics: upper-body obesity, hypertriglyceridemia, low HDL, hypertension, and abnormal glucose. All of these attributes, however, are associated with increased levels of C-reactive protein (CRP). Methods and Results— We evaluated interrelationships between CRP, the metabolic syndrome, and incident cardiovascular events among 14 719 apparently healthy women who were followed up for an 8-year period for myocardial infarction, stroke, coronary revascularization, or cardiovascular death; 24% of the cohort had the metabolic syndrome at study entry. At baseline, median CRP levels for those with 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 characteristics of the metabolic syndrome were 0.68, 1.09, 1.93, 3.01, 3.88, and 5.75 mg/L, respectively ( P trend Conclusions— These prospective data suggest that measurement of CRP adds clinically important prognostic information to the metabolic syndrome.