Rahman Shah, Matthew M Burg, Aseem Vashist, Dorothea Collins, Joyce Liu, Farid Jadbabaie, Brendon Graeber, Christine Earley, Rachel Lampert, and Robert Soufer
Myocardial ischemia provoked in the laboratory during mental stress (MSI) in patients with stable coronary artery disease (CAD) predicts subsequent clinical events. The pathophysiology of MSI differs from that of exercise ischemia, and the mechanisms tying MSI to poor prognosis are not known. C-reactive protein (CRP) is a risk marker for cardiovascular events in patients with CAD, but little is known regarding the relationship of CRP to MSI. Here, Shah et al. (269-274) studied 83 subjects with stable coronary artery disease to examine the association of C-reactive protein to MSI. The authors found that CRP levels correlate with myocardial ischemia raising the possibility that CRP may be a risk marker of MSI in patients with coronary artery disease.
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