C-Reactive Protein and the Metabolic Syndrome are Inversely Associated with Cardiorespiratory Fitness in Firefighters
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The leading cause of mortality of on-duty firefighters is sudden cardiac death. The reasons for this fatal trend remain unclear despite advances in the etiology of atherosclerosis. Specifically, low cardiorespiratory fitness, chronic subclinical inflammation (as determined by elevations in serum C-reactive protein (CRP) concentrations), and the metabolic syndrome have been associated with increased risk for future cardiovascular disease-related events. PURPOSE: To document the levels of cardiorespiratory fitness, CRP, and the metabolic syndrome, as well as to determine if there is a relationship among these variables, in firefighters. METHODS: Maximal cardiorespiratory fitness was assessed using the Bruce treadmill protocol in 214 male firefighters from Colorado (mean age 39.2 years, 94.9% Caucasian). As part of a comprehensive cardiovascular disease risk evaluation, each firefighter was also screened for the metabolic syndrome using the National Cholesterol Education Program/Adult Treatment Panel III (NCEP/ATP III) guidelines and had serum CRP measured via a high-sensitivity assay. RESULTS: At the time of their evaluation, 32 firefighters (15.0%) met the NCEP/ ATP III diagnostic criteria for the metabolic syndrome. A significant inverse trend of decreasing CRP concentrations with increasing cardiorespiratory fitness quartiles was found (p < 0.0001). This trend remained significant after adjusting for metabolic syndrome abnormalities. Similarly, a significant inverse trend of increasing cardiorespiratory fitness with decreasing metabolic abnormalities was found (p < 0.0001), independent of CRP concentrations. Finally, a significant trend of decreasing CRP concentrations was observed with decreasing metabolic abnormalities (p < 0.0001), independent of fitness levels. CONCLUSION: Increased levels of cardiorespiratory fitness are associated with decreased serum CRP concentrations and improved metabolic profiles in male firefighters. These findings suggest that the beneficial effects of regular physical activity may be mediated, in part, by anti-inflammatory mechanisms, and emphasize the importance of including regular physical activity as part of a comprehensive approach to reducing the risk factors associated with sudden cardiac death in firefighters.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".