Cross-sectional evaluation of brachial artery flow-mediated vasodilation and C-reactive protein in healthy individuals

The present study was designed to (a) examine the interrelationship between endothelial function and CRP in healthy individuals and (b) evaluate the relationship of each biomarker towards global Framingham risk scores. Brachial artery flow-mediated vasodilatation (FMD), CRP, and traditional cardiovascular risk factors were measured in the Firefighters and Their Endothelium (FATE) study, which recruited 1154 male participants (mean age 47.4 ± 9.8 years) with no known history of cardiovascular disease. No relationship was observed between FMD and CRP (p = 0.96). FMD and the Framingham risk score tended to correlate but not significantly (p = 0.07). A lower FMD was related to a higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure (p < 0.001 and p = 0.002, respectively) in the univariate analysis, and higher systolic blood pressure (p = 0.001) in the multivariate analysis. Elevated CRP levels independently correlated most closely with overall Framingham risk score (r = 0.36, p < 0.001) and a weaker although statistically significant relationship was seen with individual traditional cardiovascular risk factors (p < 0.005). The current study provided evidence that brachial artery FMD had no relationship to CRP in a large cohort of healthy subjects. These observations suggest that the predictive value of CRP may be largely independent of abnormalities in endothelial function. The additive prognostic value of endothelial vasodilator testing remains to be established.