Inflammatory biomarkers CRP, MCP-1, serum amyloid alpha and interleukin-18 in patients with HTN and dyslipidemia: impact of diabetes mellitus on metabolic syndrome and the effect of statin therapy

The objective of this study was to determine the relationship of HTN (HTN) and the inflammatory markers C-reactive protein (CRP), monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), amyloid alpha (AA) and interleukin-18 (IL-18) in persons with HTN, considering concomitant diabetes mellitus (DM) or metabolic syndrome (MS). This was a multicenter twelve-week, single-step titration, open-label study of individuals with dyslipidemia, assigned according to their initial risk assessment, to atorvastatin starting doses of 10, 20, 40 or 80 mg. In subjects with HTN (N=677) versus no HTN (N 581), there were significantly (P<0.02) higher levels of CRP, IL-18, MCP-1 and AA but not for IL-18 when combined with DM or MS, and AA or CRP when combined with MS. Systolic blood pressure significantly (P<0.02) correlated with CRP, MCP-1 and AA but not IL-18. The greatest increase in CRP was with HTN plus DM. Statin therapy produced significant dose-dependent reductions in CRP but not with similar changes in other inflammatory markers. In summary, these data suggest a complex relationship between inflammation and HTN with dyslipidemia. Although HTN is associated with an increase in these inflammatory markers, the associated conditions DM or MS lead to different patterns of increases-MCP-1 being the most consistently increased with HTN, the greatest CRP increase was with HTN and DM, and no relationship was found with IL-18 and HTN in the presence of DM or MS. In addition, there are different responses to statins depending on the nature of the inflammatory marker.