Short-term effects of atorvastatin on C-reactive protein

Abstract

Aim: To study the short-term effect of atorvastatin on C-reactive protein (CRP) in patients with or at risk for coronary heart disease. Methods and Results: One hundred and fifty-five randomly selected patients from the SWiss Intervention Trial for lowering CHolesterol (SWITCH) were assessed for high sensitivity CRP, total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol and triglycerides at baseline, and after 1 and 3 months of treatment with atorvastatin at various doses to reach pre-defined lipid target values. The median decrease of cholesterol was 28% after 1 month and 35% after 3 months. LDL-cholesterol was decreased by 37% and 45%, HDL-cholesterol was increased by 7% and 8%, respectively. Patients with a low CRP baseline concentration (lowest quartile <1·34 mg . 1-1) displayed no significant change, whereas patients in the other quartiles showed a significant decrease, of 22% to 40% (P-value <0·05 to <0·001) at 1 month and of 32% to 36% after 3 months compared to baseline. The decrease in CRP lowering was thus fully established by 1 month and this response was independent of lipid and lipoprotein changes as well as atorvastatin doses. Conclusion: Atorvastatin significantly decreases CRP concentrations after 4 weeks of therapy. These results may be important with respect to the early benefit of statin therapy. © 2001 The European Society of Cardiology. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.