Lipid and C-reactive protein levels, cardiovascular disease risk factors and simvastatin treatment in Brazilian individuals

Abstract

Background: The Framingham Risk Score (FRS) is widely recommended to estimate global risk for cardiovascular (CV) disease; however, it does not recognize all individuals with a high risk for coronary artery disease, because it does not take into account the various novel markers, such as the C-reactive protein levels (CRP). The present study aims to describe the profile of the simvastatin users and non-users in relation to FRS and high-sensitivity CRP (hs-CRP) levels.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 277 European descent individuals were divided in two groups: 177 using simvastatin 20 mg per day (T+) and 100 not using simvastatin (T-). TC, HDL-C, TG, glucose and hs-CRP levels were determined by standard methods and the FRS was calculated.

Results: The individuals in T+ sample were more prevalent in high risk group (according FRS score) than individuals in T- sample (p < 0.0001; adjusted residual = 4.21). All the individuals, users and non-users, were simultaneously classified by FRS and hs-CRP levels and no significant differences were found, even though 21.6% of those individuals in T- showed high hs-CRP levels they were in the low CV risk group, as well as 9.9% of the simvastatin users.

Conclusions: Considering that some works have shown CRP as an independent risk factor of CV and that statins could reduce CRP levels and prevent CV events, our findings show that some people that might benefit from the pleiotropic effect of statin remain without treatment if the decision is based only in those classical risk factors present in FRS.