Blood results

[jillianb]

Can anyone tell me what the normal ESP and CRP levels are I have just had blood tests and my ESR is 18 and CRP 6 .I have to make a ap to go back to docs .

[Celtic PMRGCAuk volunteer]

jillianb, your ESR is within normal range and, at 6, your CRP is just a teeny bit raised (range 0 to 5).

[Doralouise77 in reply to Celtic]

Celtic, maybe her lab normals are different, she should find out what they are, although if you get a printed copy of the results the normals are given. My lab's CRP normal is 8 or below.

Cheers

[DorsetLady PMRGCAuk volunteer]

Flippant answer - who knows!!!

More serious answer - it seems to vary from person to person. The so called norm should be under 20 for ESR, but that can be affected by many things as well as inflammation related to GCA/PMR. Mine at diagnosis was 58 but once on tabs was usually around the low teens.Recently although down to 0.5mg and hopefully! almost! GCA free it's high teens - but think that's arthritis related.

My CRP was 25 at diagnosis but ran around 5 to 6 in first year - not tested after that!

I would be more concerned on whether they fluctuate, particularly upwards.

Sure others will have differing advice according to their own circumstances.

[PMRpro Ambassador]

It depends what the CRP units are - there are 2 ways of measuring it with a 10-fold difference. It also depends on the lab's own "normal range" and you do really have to know that. Either way, it is well within normal range for one, very slightly over the upper end for the other and most labs.

The ESR is well within the "normal range" which runs from 1-20 generally - but it doesn't tell you what YOUR personal normal is. Mine is 4, 18 would be well raised, but most people are in the low to upper teens so it would be fine.

And anyway, about a fifth of patients with PMR or GCA never have raised levels anyway - so it isn't conclusive.

[Doralouise77]

I was reading about the difference between CRP and HSCRP (highly sensitive) and read that the latter is used in healthy people to measure the risk of heart disease and shouldn't be used in chronic inflammatory conditions. So when I see the lower figures I wonder why the HSCRP had been ordered. My lab's normal for CRP is 8 or below. Mine was around 16 at diagnosis of both PMR and GCA, and the highest was 25 during a GCA flare.

Cheers