Intraplaque Expression of C-Reactive Protein Predicts Cardiovascular Events in Patients with Severe Atherosclerotic Carotid Artery Stenosis

Table 3

Distribution of inflammatory biomarkers within upstream and downstream portions of carotid plaques.

	Upstream	Downstream	value
Neutrophil, cells/mm^2	2.36 (0.93–5.93)	4.33 (1.20–10.68)	0.002
Total collagen, %	29.29 (18.28–38.57)	16.52 (8.39–22.11)	<0.001
Collagen I, %	10.29 (5.37–15.20)	5.30 (2.39–8.23)	<0.001
Collagen III, %	12.14 (8.20–18.23)	5.28 (2.93–8.98)	<0.001
CRP, %	1.54 (0.61–2.78)	1.04 (0.44–2.18)	0.070
Smooth muscle cells, %	4.53 (3.01–9.00)	2.78 (1.53–4.27)	<0.001
Total macrophages (CD68^+)^†, %	5.80 (2.72–10.23)	6.47 (2.24–13.94)	0.205
M^‡1 subset (CD86^+), %	1.33 (0.49–3.06)	3.21 (1.24–7.11)	<0.001
M1 subset (HLA-DR^+), %	10.47 (6.07–18.30)	9.50 (5.81–14.30)	0.124
M2 subset (CD163^+), %	1.66 (0.56–3.83)	1.37 (0.22–3.30)	0.049

Data are expressed as median (interquartile range [IQR]).
CRP: c-reactive protein.
^†CD: cluster of differentiation.
^‡M: macrophage.
HLA-DR: human leukocyte antigen-antigen D related.