Higher level of systemic C-reactive protein is independently predictive of coronary heart disease in older community-dwelling adults: the three-city study.

OBJECTIVES: To assess the association between systemic C-reactive protein (CRP) and incident coronary heart disease (CHD) in community-dwelling elderly people. DESIGN: A French population-based multicenter prospective cohort study. SETTING: Three cities in France: Bordeaux in the southwest, Dijon in the northeast, and Montpellier in the southeast. PARTICIPANTS: After 4 years of follow-up, a case-cohort study was designed including 1,004 subjects randomly selected from the initial cohort of 9,294 subjects free of CHD at baseline and 174 subjects who developed first CHD events during follow-up. MEASUREMENTS: Hazard ratios (HRs) were estimated using a Cox proportional hazard model adapted for the case-cohort design using a CRP level less than 1 mg/L as the reference category. RESULTS: Of the random sample, 24.3% had a CRP level less than 1.0 mg/L, 45.8% had a CRP level of 1.0 to 2.9 mg/L, and 29.9% had a CRP level of 3.0 to 10.0 mg/L. The HRs for CHD, adjusted for age, sex, and study center, were 1.69 (95% confidence interval (CI)=1.04-2.75) for CRP from 1.0 to 2.9 mg/L and 2.32 (95% CI=1.41-3.82) for CRP from 3.0 to 10.0 mg/L (P for trend <.001). After additional adjustment for smoking, body mass index, diabetes mellitus, systolic blood pressure, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, triglycerides, statin use, and antihypertensive treatment, a baseline CRP of 3.0 to 10.0 mg/L remained associated with risk of CHD (HR=1.87, 95% CI=1.09-3.25), although CRP did not improve the discriminative ability of a predicting model based on traditional risk factors (receiver operating characteristic curves from 0.740 to 0.749). CONCLUSION: CRP is an independent CHD risk marker but does not improve CHD risk prediction in community-dwelling elderly people.

[Patients' perception of information received when a complementary medical examination is prescribed]. / Perception par les patients de l'information reçue lors d'un examen complémentaire.

Medical doctors are required to provide information to their patients regarding their medical procedures according to the law on patient information enacted on March 4, 2002. The objective of this study was to assess patients' awareness and satisfaction with respect to their perception of information obtained prior to or during a medical examination. A self-descriptive patient survey was conducted at the Groupe Hospitalier of Pitié-Salpêtrière in 2005 for this purpose. Data were collected at three distinct moments using a standard questionnaire. 147 patients were interviewed (101 had received and MRI and 46 a bronchoscopy). Twenty percent of the participants reported that they had not been provided with any specific medical or paramedical information before the examination and 4% had received no information at all. Health professionals must ensure that information is given to their patients in a manner that takes into account their expectations and responds to their concerns before a medical procedure is performed in order to improve its delivery and its intrinsic quality.

Prothrombotic mutations, hormone therapy, and venous thromboembolism among postmenopausal women: impact of the route of estrogen administration.

BACKGROUND: Oral estrogen increases the risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in postmenopausal women, particularly in those with a prothrombotic mutation. Transdermal estrogen may be safe with respect to VTE. We investigated the impact of the route of estrogen administration on the association between a prothrombotic mutation (factor V Leiden or prothrombin G20210A mutation) and VTE risk. METHODS AND RESULTS: We performed a multicenter case-control study of VTE among postmenopausal women who were enrolled in 1999 through 2004 at 7 clinical centers in France. We recruited 235 consecutive patients with a first documented episode of idiopathic VTE and 554 controls. Factor V Leiden was associated with a 3.4-fold-increased risk of VTE (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.0 to 5.8), and a prothrombin mutation was associated with a 4.8-fold-increased risk of VTE (95% CI, 2.5 to 9.4). Oral but not transdermal estrogen was associated with an increased risk of VTE (odds ratio [OR], 4.3; 95% CI, 2.6 to 7.2; and OR, 1.2; 95% CI, 0.8 to 1.7, respectively). After adjustment for potential confounding factors, the combination of either factor V Leiden or prothrombin G20210A mutation and oral estrogen gave a 25-fold-increased risk of VTE compared with nonusers without mutation (95% CI, 6.9 to 95.0). However, the risk for women with prothrombotic mutation using transdermal estrogen was similar to that of women with a mutation who were not using estrogen (OR, 4.4; 95% CI, 2.0 to 9.9; and OR, 4.1; 95% CI, 2.3 to 7.4, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: In contrast to oral estrogen, transdermal estrogen does not confer additional risk on women who carry a prothrombotic mutation. The safety of transdermal estrogen has to be confirmed in randomized trials.