This article reviews the clinical applications of C-reactive protein (CRP). This acute-phase protein is a distinct and sensitive marker for inflammation and tissue injury. It is a simple, fast, and relatively inexpensive latex agglutination test. The aspects of CRP reviewed include diagnostic support, serial measurements to evaluate disease course and therapeutic response, and screening studies.

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would make a marvellous tour guide. On numerous occasions whilst reading this book I felt like a participant on a bus tour, looking out of the window into the contested spaces of advanced capitalism with Merrifield sitting at the front, microphone in hand, telling us what to look at, how it can be understood and what we should be doing about it once the tour ends. Dialectical Urbanism is a whistle-stop excursion through Baltimore, Liverpool, Los Angeles and New York-with a momentary pit-stop at the debates surrounding anti-urbanism and zero tolerance (chapter 5)-where we are presented with brief yet compelling glimpses of the ways in which individuals, organisations, communities and academics are wrestling with the challenges and injustices posed by the urbanisation of capital and those who control its direction. The hallmark of this book lies in its thoughtful exploration of the dialectic between urbanism, cities as lived, experienced, concrete human places of use value, and urbanisation, cities as abstract instruments of capitalism, "the vital nerve centers of the mode of production" (p. 155), inhuman spaces of exchange value. All of the author's case studies are framed in such a way that they exemplify this contradiction, but his purpose is never to transcend or resolve this contradiction, rather to investigate productively, in true Marxian spirit, the tension between urbanism and urbanisation: progressives need to find ways of incorporating struggle, conflict, and contradiction into a passionate and just urban life, secretly acknowledging that the way beyond these contra-dictions is working through them, not around them (p. 170).