High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein Levels and Metabolic Disorders in Obese and Overweight

In tro duc ti on C-reactive protein (CRP) is a protein produced mainly from hepatocytes in acute episodes of inflammation or infection. In recent years, CRP has been established also as a marker of subclinical inflammation. Several studies have confirmed the role of subclinical inflammation in the course of atherosclerosis and have associated CRP levels with the metabolic syndrome (MS), type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and increased risk for cardiovascular disease (1,2). There are only a few published studies, with a small number of participants, on obese children and adolescents, which describe subclinical inflammation in these early ages, but these studies do not fully investigate the characteristics and clinical importance of subclinical inflammation (3). The purpose of this study was to compare the levels of high