| ||Healthy Heart || | Do You Need C-Reactive Protein Testing?
Last reviewed by Faculty of Harvard Medical School on August 29,
2012 By Thomas H. Lee, M.D. Brigham and Women's Hospital For the
last decade, the drumbeat has been building. New tests have come
along that supposedly will improve our ability to estimate a
person's risk of a heart attack. Right now, you are supposed to
know your cholesterol numbers and your blood pressure. Do you
also need to know your C-reactive protein (CRP)? The CRP test is
one of the new markers for heart disease risk. CRP is a blood
test that reflects inflammation within the body. Researchers
have become convinced over the last decade that the body's
arteries are not just tubes that carry blood they are living
"systems," and atherosclerosis is the result of the process of
damage and repair to the linings of the arteries. This process
produces inflammation just as surely as a scrape causes redness
on the surface of your skin and a CRP rise as well. Why do we
need CRP testing wh