Context

Individuals with cardiovascular disease (CVD) are at high risk for further cardiovascular events. Further risk stratification in these individuals could allow more precise targeting of invasive tests (eg, cardiac stress tests, angiograms) as well as interventions (blood pressure or lipid lowering, antithrombotics, revascularisation, etc) aiming to reduce subsequent risk but which also confer risk, inconvenience and costs to the individual and/or the healthcare system. Better methods of risk stratification are therefore of great interest.

C reactive protein (CRP) is an inflammatory marker associated with risk in people without CVD.1 The review by Hemingway and colleagues aimed to consolidate the available evidence assessing CRP as a risk marker in people with coronary artery disease and to assess whether there was evidence of bias affecting …