Julian J Steg, Hanan Slimani, Tennent K Hanley, Baron D Pearson, and Mandel Z Manson
Abstract
Recent research suggests that patients with elevated basal levels of CRP are at an increased risk of diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease, and an important risk factor for atherosclerosis. CRP is an acute-phase reactant usually present in human serum with a concentration is usually lower than 10 mg/L, slightly increasing with aging. Higher levels are found in late pregnant women, mild inflammation and viral infections (10–40 mg/L), active inflammation, bacterial infection (40–200 mg/L), severe bacterial infections and burns (>200 mg/L). Experiments were performed on human vascular endothelial cells. That are incubated with human CRP for the indicated time, and proinflammatory cytokines, chemokines and adhesion molecule expression were detected by flow cytometry, ELIZA and western blot respectively. Human vascular endothelial cells cultured with recombinant CRP (15 μg/mL for 48 hours) showed increase in ICAM-1, VCAM-1, IL-6, 1L-1B, TNF-α and MCP-1. We concluded that CRP may play a direct role in promoting the proinflammatory component of atherosclerosis and present a potential target for the treatment of atherosclerosis.
Key words: Atherosclerosis, CRP, Proinflammatory cytokines, Cell adhesion molecules
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