New lower cutoff for serum high sensitive C-reactive protein in obese women indicates the risk of metabolic syndrome.

Objective, materials and methods: The aim of this cross-sectional study with a consecutive enrolment was to analyse the role of high sensitive C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) measurement in similarly obese patients with and without the metabolic syndrome (MS).

RESULTS: In total, 589 obese patients were screened, of whom 138 aged 50-75 years were enrolled. The others were rejected due to strict criteria of enrolment, so that the group was highly homogenous in numerous clinical aspects. The study group consisted of 96 patients (49 females and 47 males) with MS; 42 patients (20 females and 22 males) had isolated obesity without MS and served as a control group. hs-CRP levels were significantly higher in patients with MS (p = .0012). To find out the CRP cutoff between MS and non-MS obesity, we performed ROC curve analyses: hs-CRP lower than 1.96 mg/l was the best predictor of simple obesity without MS (sensitivity = 66.7%; specificity = 66.7%; AUC = 0.7; p = .0002). In a separate analysis, hs-CRP level lower than 1.96 mg/dl remained statistically significant as a predictor of isolated central obesity only for females.

CONCLUSIONS: Already a relatively low level of hs-CRP around 2.0 mg/dl is observed in the MS, whereas patients with simple obesity without the accompanying features of MS would have hs-CRP lower than this value.