Association between High Sensitive-C Reactive Protein and Lipid Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Apparently Healthy Nigerian Young Adults

Abstract

It’s a known fact that 50% of all myocardial infarctions occur among individuals without overt hyperlipidaemia, inspite of the strong association of lipid concentrations with coronary heart disease risk (CHD) [2]. It has been shown that about 20% of all coronary events occurred in the absence of any of the traditional risk factors, such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidaemia and smoking [3]. These findings raise the query if these conventional risk factors are sufficient to recognize individuals at increased risk of CHD. Therefore various non-lipid atherogenic markers have been suggested in an effort to better determine individuals at risk of CHD, these include markers of inflammation (high sensitivity C-reactive protein, interleukins, adhesion molecules, heat shock proteins); markers of fibrinolytic and haemostatic function (D-dimers, fibrinogen, thrombinantithrombin III complex); homocysteine to mention but few. Of all these non-lipid risk markers available, high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) is considered to be the most robust tool with test uniqueness desirable and favorable for clinical use as novel marker for CHD risk [4].