Turkey: Increased Serum C‐reactive Protein to Albumin Ratio and Erectile Dysfunction Risk

Increased serum C‐reactive protein (CRP) to albumin ratio (CAR) is associated with increased erectile dysfunction (ED) risk and its severity, according to a recent study in the journal Andrologia.

"The results indicate that CAR levels may be useful in assessing ED risk as an inflammatory marker and play an important role in ED etiology," wrote the authors.

Selamettin Demir and İrfan Şafak Barlas from Van Training and Research Hospital, Edremit, Turkey aimed to evaluate whether an independent indicator of erectile dysfunction is C‐reactive protein/albumin ratio.

For this purpose, the researchers prospectively evaluated CAR, demographic features, and other criteria of 198 patients with ED who visited the researchers' outpatient clinic during March 2019–April 2020. The study also included healthy control subjects without systemic or infectious diseases.

Key Findings of the Study

• The mean difference of CAR between ED and no ED was statistically significant (0.55 ± 0.27 and 0.79 ± 0.49).
• On the basis of the ROC analysis, CAR has a good ED diagnostic value with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.63 and better diagnostic performance to distinguish ED severity (AUC: 0.73).
• Mean CAR gradually increased with increasing severity of ED.
• The CAR has been described as an independent ED indicator in the multivariate analysis.

"The study showed substantially higher CAR and CRP serum levels in ED patients compared with that of control. We observed the validate CAR versus CRP cut-off value for predicting ED. These results indicate that CAR levels can be of interest in assessing ED risk as an inflammatory marker and play a key role in ED aetiology," wrote the authors. "In order to explain the relationship between CAR, CRP and ED rates, future researches with larger sample sizes are required."

Reference

The study titled, "An independent indicator of erectile dysfunction is C‐reactive protein/albumin ratio," is published in the journal Andrologia.

DOI: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/and.14073