Zoomer boomer health lifestyle trend heart cardio vascular disease protein CRP predictor race minority AgeVenture Demko

Heart Disease Prevention: the beat goes on
Dr. David Demko, gerontologist and editor
AgeVenture News Service

You are about to regret dropping that chemistry class in school because, well, knowledge of your body's chemistry can turn out to be a life or death situation. No worries. AgeVenture News is here to describe the details about new life-saving research.

Your blood contains a specific protein (C-reactive protein or CRP) that can help predict future heart disease. That's great news. But, the proverbial "fine print" suggests you look closer into this life-enhancing knowledge. It now seems that CRP can vary considerably among women and men, as well as blacks and whites, according to new research at UT Southwestern Medical Center published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology

So, everyone has CRP, but it doesn't work the same in all of us. Sort of like learning you've just won a free car, then getting the news that the type of car is a junker or a Mercedes. Read the rest of this report to see whether or not you'll be "riding in style" when it comes to heart disease prediction.

CRP is released as part of the human body’s inflammation response. Infections and inflammation caused by various illnesses can cause CRP levels in the blood to rise. Abnormal fatty deposits on the interior walls of arteries that are prone to rupture and cause heart attacks may also cause higher levels of CRP, which is why the protein has been touted recently as a means to determine the relative risk of heart disease in some patients. Get it? When the level of CRP in your blood goes up, so does the likelihood of heart disease.

“Our goal was to determine the distribution of CRP levels among different genders and races,” said Dr. Amit Khera, assistant professor of internal medicine and lead author of the study. “CRP as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease has been studied mainly in white men." Whether or not the findings based on white subjects applies to the broader population remains to be seen. That's where Dr. Khera's research comes in. Her study focused on CRP levels among both genders and races.

Here are the highlights of what the UT researchers found.

patients with a higher body mass index (BMI), a measurement of obesity, had correspondingly higher levels of CRP
women typically had much higher levels of CRP in their blood than men
blacks had higher levels of CRP than white patients
CRP levels in white women were higher than those in black men
black men have a disproportionately higher rates of cardiovascular disease than white women

“Our study was a snapshot of a population, but it showed that white women have higher levels of CRP than both black and white men. Since white women have lower rates of cardiovascular disease, this study raises some questions about how best to use CRP in the real-world setting.” said Dr. Khera. “We need more research to determine if these differences translate into differences in cardiovascular events.”

Dr. James de Lemos, assistant professor of internal medicine and the study’s senior author, said: “This is a large study that highlights potentially important race and gender differences in CRP levels. The most striking finding was the observation that almost two-thirds of black women had CRP levels above the Centers for Disease Control-defined high-risk threshold. These differences may have implications for the broad use of CRP testing.”

Long-term studies are needed to see if increased CRP levels in the blood lead to heart disease in a large and diverse population If so, it may become necessary to adjust CRP levels according to race and gender, Dr. de Lemos said.

This research is part of the Dallas Heart Study – a multiethnic, population-based study of more than 6,000 patients in Dallas County designed to examine cardiovascular disease. The Dallas Heart Study is funded by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. The C-reactive protein measurement study was supported by a grant from Roche Diagnostics.
Image credit: National Institutes of Health.