hs-CRP- A New Risk Assessment Tool in Prehypertensive Subjects

Tripti Saxena, B. K. Agarwal, V. K. Sharma, Pooja Lanke and Sabiha Naz

Department of Biochemistry, Gandhi Medical College, Bhopal - 462 001, India.

ABSTRACT: Prehypertension is an American medical classification for cases where a person's blood pressure is elevated above normal but not to the level considered as hypertensive, systolic 120 to 139 mm Hg and diastolic 80 to 89 mm Hg1. Prehypertension is the most important public health problem in developing countries and one of the major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. The natural history of prehypertension starts when some combination of hereditary and environmental factors set in to the motion transient but repetitive perturbation of cardiovascular homeostasis not enough to raise the blood pressure to level defined as abnormal but enough to begin the cascade that, over many years lead to BPs that are usually elevated2. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the association between undiagnosed prehypertension and serum CRP level across the range of blood pressure categories including prehypertension i.e. 121-139/89 mm Hg. C reactive protein, a simple downstream marker of inflammation , has now emerged as a major cardiovascular risk factor. In the present study, serum hs-CRP level and lipid profile were monitored in 100 subjects with prehypertension and 100 age sex matched with normotensive controls. The level of hs-CRP in serum of cases were significantly high (p<0.0001) and level of HDL were significantly low (p<0.0001) compare to healthy controls.

KEYWORDS: Prehypertension; hs-CRP; Inflammation

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