Inflammation and incident-isolated systolic hypertension in older adults: the Rotterdam study

Abstract

Objectives: Previous cross-sectional studies found an association between inflammatory markers and measures of arterial stiffness. Recently, some studies investigated whether patients with genotypes associated with high levels of circulating C-reactive protein had high arterial stiffness. These studies reported an association between C-reactive protein levels and measures of arterial stiffness, but no association between polymorphisms in the C-reactive protein gene and arterial stiffness, suggesting that C-reactive protein may have no causal role in the development of arterial stiffness. To further investigate the nature of the association between inflammatory markers and arterial stiffness, we prospectively examined the association of high-specificity C-reactive protein with incident-isolated systolic hypertension, as a model of arterial stiffness, in a large population-based study.

Methods and results: The present study included 1637 apparently healthy participants from the Rotterdam study. The mean age of the participants was 64 +/- 6.4 years. During follow-up, 252 participants developed isolated systolic hypertension. Logistic regression analyses were performed. One standard deviation of high-specificity C-reactive protein was associated with incident-isolated systolic hypertension [odds ratio (OR) 1.19, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.01-1.41].

Conclusion: The findings of the present study support a role of C-reactive protein in the development of isolated systolic hypertension in apparently healthy older adults.