Evaluation of HS-CRP and Lipid Profile in COPD

Abstract

COPD is a major public health problem. More than 50 % of the patients of COPD die because of some cardiovascular event. Traditionally, the risk of CVD is assessed by the presence of dyslipidaemia. Recently, HS-CRP has emerged as a novel risk factor for the CVD assessment. In this study, we assessed the patients of COPD for CVD with HS-CRP and lipid indicators. Forty Five diagnosed patients of COPD and 45 age, sex, and BMI matched healthy controls were enrolled for the study after the institutional ethical committee's clearance was obtained. The fasting serum samples of the study subjects were evaluated for the lipid profile and HS-CRP. There was no statistical difference in the lipid profile in the two groups, while HS-CRP was significantly raised in the COPD patients. On applying kappa statistics, we found a poor agreement between the lipid parameters and HS-CRP in estimating the risk for CVD. This underlines the independent importance of HS-CRP in the CVD assessment of COPD patients. GOLD has described COPD as a systemic chronic inflammatory disease which involves the lung and the distant organs by the emissary of the systemic inflammation, which is also an antecedent to cardiovascular diseases. COPD is a systemic inflammatory disease which is underlined by this study. But the derangement of the lipid indicators is not statistically significant. This suggests the addition of HS-CRP in the assessment of the COPD patients for CVD. This further needs to be ascertained in a large prospective model. COPD is systemic inflammatory disease, but there is hardly any derangement of the lipid indicators.