CRP is one of the most common blood tests, doctors normally order if anyone has signs of inflammation or infection. Inflammation is part of the body’s fight against illness or injury. So, if you have symptoms of inflammation such as fever, chills, redness or flushing, nausea, vomiting, rapid breathing, and/or rapid heart rate, burns, trauma, infections, such as pneumonia or tuberculosis, heart attack, chronic inflammatory diseases such as lupus, vasculitis, or rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, certain cancers, CRP is the primary test to identify the presence of any such underlying reasons.
A c-reactive protein test measures the level of c-reactive protein (CRP) in your blood. CRP is a protein made by your liver. It’s sent into your bloodstream in response to inflammation. Inflammation is your body’s way of protecting your tissues if you’ve been injured or have an infection.
CRP tests also can support doctors to verify how well treatment for inflammation or infection is effective on a patient. Presently, CRP is considered as a very important risk marker for cardiovascular disease in addition to underlying inflammation. Patients with high CRP concentrations are more likely to develop stroke, myocardial infarction & significant peripheral vascular diseases.
Normal CRP levels are upto 6.0 mg/L. So, higher levels of CRP indicate more severe disease course‐linked to lung injury and worse prognosis. CRP levels are correlated well with the severity of symptoms of patients with COVID‐19 also; therefore, it may be a suitable marker in assessing a patient’s conditions together with other clinical findings.
A significant increase of CRP was found with levels on average 20 to 50 mg/L in patients with COVID‐19. Elevated levels of CRP were observed up to 86% in severe COVID‐19 patients. Elevated level of CRP may be a valuable early marker in predicting the possibility of disease progression in non‐severe patients with COVID‐19
Acute bacterial infections cause C-reactive protein level tends to range from 150-350mg/L. CRP value of greater than 300mg/L within first 48 hours of admission in ICU is a good marker of disease severity in patients of Community acquired pneumonia with Sepsis & may be useful to identify high risk patients.