OBJECTIVETo study the relationship between Chinese medicine syndrome and serum level of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) in patients with stable coronary heart disease (CHD).

METHODSSerum hs-CRP level was determined in 346 patients with stable CHD, whose diagnoses were confirmed by coronary angiography, and the correlation between patients' syndrome and serum hs-CRP level was analyzed.

RESULTSIn all the CHD patients enrolled, the most commonly encountered Chinese medicine complex syndromes were the qi deficiency and blood-stasis syndrome, the yang deficiency and blood-stasis syndrome, and the qi deficiency with blood-stasis and turbid phlegm syndrome; the dominant syndrome types were blood-stasis, qi deficiency and phlegm-turbidity, which revealed in 324 patients (93.6%), 189 patients (54.6%) and 140 patients (40.5%), respectively. Comparisons of hs-CRP level between different complex syndromes and syndrome elements showed no significant difference (P > 0.05). However, for patients with phlegm-turbidity syndrome, the hs-CRP level was much higher in patients tended to heat than in those tended to cold (2.23 +/- 2.12 mg/L vs 1.59 +/- 1.27 mg/L, P < 0.05). Besides, the score of blood-stasis syndrome showed no correlation with hs-CRP level (Person correlation coefficient: 0.069, P = 0.203).

CONCLUSIONThe elevation of hs-CRP level is closely cor related with phlegm-heat syndrome in stable CHD patients. As an inflammatory biomarker, hs-CRP may be regarded as one of the microcosmic indices of toxin in Chinese medicine, which provides an objective evidence for the pathogenesis hinge of accumulated heat to transform toxin, so it is worthy of further study.