In the Justification for Use of statins in Prevention: an Intervention Trial Evaluating Rosuvastatin (JUPITER), random allocation of rosuvastatin compared to placebo among primary prevention patients with a low-density lipoprotein cholesterol level of <130 mg/dl and a high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) level of > or =2 mg/L resulted in a highly significant 44% reduction in major vascular events. However, the relation of baseline hs-CRP levels to risk within JUPITER has not previously been described and has been an area of controversy for study interpretation. As reported in the present study for the first time, despite enrolling patients with a constrained range of values, increasing baseline hs-CRP levels within JUPITER were nonetheless associated with increasing vascular risk in analyses treating hs-CRP as a continuous variable, as an ordinal variable, and as a threshold variable. As anticipated, the relative risk reduction associated with rosuvastatin was similar in magnitude across the tertile and threshold levels of entry hs-CRP. In conclusion, as the absolute risk increased with increasing hs-CRP, the absolute risk reduction associated with rosuvastatin within JUPITER was also greatest among those with the greatest entry hs-CRP levels.
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