Abstract

MARTIN DE DIEGO, C. E. et al. C-Reactive protein value related to a smoking history and composition of nicotine and tobacco tar. An. Med. Interna (Madrid) [online]. 2006, vol.23, n.1, pp.3-10. ISSN 0212-7199.

Introduction: The CRP is known to be an acute phase reactant, but with new high sensitivity assay methods it appears that CRP is also a marker of chronic inflammation. This study was to investigate whether smoking acts as a systemic disease and to see if there is a relation between CRP values and smoking. Material and methods: 762 persons were studied, with a mean age of 41.74 ± 10.03 years. 200 were smokers, 344 were non-smokers and 218 were ex-smokers. The following details were noted in the smoking history: cigarette brand, number of cigarettes/day, number of years' smoking and milligrams of nicotine and tar. In the case of ex-smokers, the number of years since giving up smoking was noted. The CRP was determined using the high sensitive Tina - Quant assay. Windows SPSS version 11.0 software was used. Results: The CRP values showed statistically significant differences between the smoking and non-smoking groups. A statistically significant increase in CRP was observed in relation to number of cigarettes/day (p ≤ 0.001), mg of nicotine (p = 0.017), mg of tar (p=0.020) and number of years of smoking (p ≤ 0.0001). However, when analysing the relation between CRP and the number of years since giving up smoking, there was a negative curve of 0.02 in the equation, but this was not of statistical significance. Conclusions: CRP levels rise when there is an increase in number of cigarettes/day, mg of nicotine and tar and years' smoking.

Keywords : C-reactive protein; Smoking; Nicotine; Tobacco tar.

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