hs-CRPHigh-sensitivity C-reactive protein
A sensitive blood marker of low-grade inflammation in the body.
High sensitivity C-reactive protein measures the same protein as a standard CRP test, using an assay sensitive enough to resolve the low concentrations that matter for cardiovascular risk rather than the high ones that indicate acute infection.
CRP is made by the liver in response to inflammatory signalling, so hs-CRP is a general marker of low grade inflammation. It is used alongside lipids and blood pressure to refine cardiovascular risk estimates, on the reasoning that atherosclerosis is partly an inflammatory process.
The interpretation bands most often quoted come from a CDC and American Heart Association workshop: broadly, under 1 mg/L as lower risk, 1 to 3 as average, and above 3 as higher risk, in people without an acute illness.
That last clause is the catch, and it is a large one. Any infection, injury, recent surgery, flare of an inflammatory condition or even a hard training session can push it up transiently, and a cold last week can produce a result that looks alarming and means nothing. Values above about 10 mg/L are generally taken to reflect something acute rather than baseline risk.
Because of that, it is measured on a day you are well, and repeated before being acted on. A single raised value in isolation is a reason to retest rather than to change anything.
What lowers it is not a supplement aisle. Losing excess visceral fat, regular exercise, stopping smoking, treating sleep apnoea and improving diet quality all reduce it, and the reduction is a marker of those changes rather than a target in itself.
In practice, treat hs-CRP as one input into a risk picture, interpret it with a clinician, and ignore any product sold on the promise of reducing inflammation without outcome evidence behind it.
Sources
Where your own result would sit
Most people reading this page are holding a blood-test report with this marker on it, and the question they arrived with is whether their number is normal. A reference interval says where most results from a healthy population fall; a guideline threshold is where a clinical body draws a line for a decision. Neither is a target, and a result on the wrong side of one is not a diagnosis: the same number can be unremarkable in one person and worth looking into in another, which is why the clinician who ordered the test reads it against your history rather than against a list.
hs-CRP has no published interval on this page yet. We hold one, and the dashboard draws it beside a reader’s own result, but it has not been read back against the laboratory’s own page since it was collected. A figure printed beside somebody’s blood result has to have been seen at its source, not remembered, so this one waits.
On your own blood test?
hs-CRP is one of the markers FitTools can read from an uploaded blood-test report. You confirm every value before anything is saved, and your results are explained together in one place.