How does inflammation in the body contribute to heart disease?

Chronic inflammation can put your heart out of commission for good. Inflammation is basically an immune response to infection or injury. Externally, it’s recognized as redness, elevated temperature and swelling—symptoms that are evidence of immune cell activity working to break down injured and dying tissues so that new, healthy ones can replace them. In proper proportion, this serves as part of the healing cycle. But certain factors can force this delicate balance out of whack, leading to inflammatory overkill that can cause damage over time to otherwise healthy tissue.

One of the most accurate predictors of future cardiovascular disease is the level of C-reactive protein (CRP ) in the blood, which indicates the extent of inflammation in the body. A 2002 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found the CRP blood test to be twice as effective as a standard cholesterol test in predicting heart attacks and strokes—which isn’t all that surprising when you consider that half of all heart attack and stroke victims have normal cholesterol levels. Other well-established cardiac risk factors for heart disease, such as obesity, smoking, hypertension and chronic periodontal disease, are all associated with elevated levels of CRP.

A study published in the July 2003 issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association found that seniors with the highest CRP levels had a 60 percent increased risk of stroke. In addition, the Women’s Health Study, which involved 39,876 healthy, postmenopausal women, found that those who had the highest CRP levels had five times the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and seven times the risk of having a heart attack compared with subjects who had the lowest levels. This is key: CRP levels predicted risk even in women who appeared to have no other pertinent risk factors.