Association between C-reactive protein and pre-diabetic status in a Chinese Han clinical population

C-reactive protein (CRP) has been showed to be associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus, but whether CRP underlies glucose disorders in Asian people is still unclear, for they have much lower body mass index (BMI) levels than these Westerns in previous studies.

In this clinical-based cross-sectional study, the association between CRP and hyperglycaemia in different BMI levels and different gender was compared among 1730 Chinese Han men and women, including 1258 subjects with normal glucose tolerance (NGT), 126 subjects with impaired fasting glucose (IFG) and 346 subjects with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT). Subjects with isolated IFG or IGT were all newly diagnosed and did not use anti-diabetic drugs.

Compared with subjects with NGT, BMI, fasting blood glucose, homoeostasis model assessment insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), blood pressure, dyslipidemia, and serum CRP levels were increased in subjects with IGT and IFG. In stratified analyses, increasing CRP levels were strongly associated with prevalence of IGT and IFG in different BMI strata. After adjustment for sex, age, BMI, education, alcohol consumption, smoking, hypertension status, recreational physical activity and occupational physical activity, the ORs across quartiles of CRP were 1.00, 1.43, 2.14 and 2.29 for IFG (P for trend: 0.025) and 1.00, 1.85, 2.32 and 2.79 for IGT (P for trend: 0.012).

These results support the hypothesis that chronic inflammation may be involved in the development of hyperglycaemia, even though in a thinner and healthy population.