What Causes Elevated C-reactive Protein?
• Elevated C-Reactive Protein and Interleukin-6 Predict Type II Diabetes While some doctors are finally catching on to the fact that elevated C-reactive protein increases heart attack and stroke risk, they still know little about its other dangers. Even fewer practicing physicians understand that pro-inflammatory cytokines are an underlying cause of systemic inflammation that is indicated by excess C-reactive protein in the blood. In an abstract published in the March 6, 2002 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-a) levels were measured in a group of people with high blood pressure and a group with normal blood pressure (Verdecchia et al. 2002). The objective of this study was to ascertain if arterial flow mediated dilation was affected by hypertension and chronic inflammation as evidenced by high levels of the pro-inflammatory cytokine TNF-a. The hypertensive subjects taking anti-hypertensive medications had about the same
