Background: The JUPITER trial has recently demonstrated an outstanding reduction of cardiovascular events by 20 mg rosuvastatin/day in subjects with high CRP who were apparently healthy at baseline. However, absence of atherosclerosis in JUPITER was based on the subjects' history and not proven objectively.
Methods: To put the results of JUPITER in perspective, we evaluated serum CRP in a consecutive series of 703 statin-naïve Caucasian patients with angiographically proven stable CAD.
Results: From these stable CAD patients, only 69.2% met the ≥2.0 mg/l serum CRP inclusion criterion of the JUPITER trial. Median CRP [interquartile range] in our CAD patients was 3.3 [1.6-6.6] mg/l, which was significantly (p<0.001) lower than the median CRP in JUPITER (4.2 mg/l).
Conclusions: Our results point to considerable subclinical atherosclerosis in the patients studied in JUPITER. The impressive results of that trial may not be generalizable to healthy populations all over the world.
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