C-Reactive Protein: Eighty Years from Discovery to Emergence as a Major Risk Marker for Cardiovascular Disease

摘要

C-reactive protein (CRP)2 was discovered in 1930 by William Tillett and Thomas Francis from the Rockefeller University. They described a third serologic fraction, or "fraction C," that could be isolated from patients infected with pneumococcus that was distinct from previously known capsular polysaccharide and nucleoprotein fractions detectable by specific antibody response (1). A decade later, Oswald Avery and Maclyn McCarty梩he research team who originally described the "transforming principle" and the concept that genes are made of DNA梐lso described CRP as an "acute-phase reactant" that was increased in serum of patients suffering from a spectrum of inflammatory stimuli, including myocarditis and the inflammation associated with rheumatic fever (2-4)#