High Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Asthma- A Prospective Study in North India

Abstract

BACKGROUND High sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) is an acute phase reactant with well documented sensitivity that is commonly used to diagnose infections and inflammatory conditions like COPD and Asthma. We wanted to study the plasma hs-CRP levels in patients of COPD and asthma. METHODS This is a prospective study conducted for a period of one year from Nov. 2017-Oct. 2018, conducted at GMC, Jammu, which is a tertiary care centre. In our study, out of 100 patients who were studied, 50 were male (50%) and 50 were female (50%) with male: female ratio of 1:1. RESULTS Thirty (30%) patients were asthmatics and seventy (70%) patients had COPD, with asthma to COPD ratio of 1:2.3. CONCLUSIONS High sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP), which is an inflammatory marker, in the present study had a strong association with COPD and asthma both in males and females with interaction p-values in case of male asthmatics (0.003), female asthmatics (0.01), COPD males (0.001) and COPD females (0.