November 22, 2002
C-reactive protein is easy to measure, but this test is not yet generally used in clinical practice. Also, it has not been proven that interventions to reduce the inflammation will lower the risk of disease, although this appears likely. The authors conducted an earlier study2 and recommend a larger trial of statins for this purpose.
These studies did not involve HIV. However, standard guidelines for lowering heart risk are often used in HIV treatment. And inflammation might be a greater problem in persons with HIV disease than in the general population.
The HIV community should follow this developing research (as well as other experimental tests for measuring heart risk, such as homocysteine levels). Some HIV-specific research would be easy to do -- for example, testing whether certain populations have a higher level of C-reactive protein would require only one blood sample and laboratory test from each member of a cohort. Perhaps AIDS medicine could be a leader in bringing the new information into clinical practice.
Copyright 2002 by John S. James. Permission granted for noncommercial reproduction, provided that our address and phone number are included if more than short quotations are used.
ISSN # 1052-4207
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