Background: Although thought to be involved in the precipitation of the acute ischemic stroke, C-reactive protein (CRP) was scarcely investigated in the first few hours of a cerebral infarction.
Patients and methods: CRP was measured in a consecutive series of patients within the first 3 h of the onset of a first-ever acute cerebral infarction, and in control inpatients, matched for sex and age (±2 years).
Results: Three hundred eighty-seven stroke patients and 387 controls were enrolled. There were 215 men and 172 women in each group. Mean age was 66 years for both. CRP was significantly higher in stroke patients (median 5.0 mg/L, interquartile range [IQR] 2.0-10.0) than controls (median 1.9 mg/L, IQR 0.7-3.9), p < .0001. CRP remained a variable independently associated with stroke in the multiple logistic regression model.
Conclusions: CRP appears to be significantly increased already in the first 3 h because of the acute ischemic stroke.