The treatment and daily dose for drugs is listed next to the year and author. Dotted line indicates the weighted overall random-effects estimate of C-reactive protein (CRP) reduction. A = atorvastatin; C = cerivastatin; Ez = ezetimibe 10 mg/day; FF = fenofibrate; FO = fish oil; L = lovastatin; N = niacin; P = pravastatin; R = rosuvastatin; RCT = randomized controlled trial; S = simvastatin.

Average net change in C-reactive protein (CRP) (placebo – treatment) and 95% confidence intervals show significantly greater CRP reduction for statin or statin-ezitimibe interventions, 80 mg per day statin regimins, and therapies that offered greater low-density lipoprotein (LDL) reduction.

The dashed line is the fixed-effects estimate of change in CRP across interventions, and the dotted lines are pseudo-95% confidence intervals for the standard error of change in CRP, assuming no heterogeneity between studies. Bias is suspected if the plots are asymmetric (i.e., the point estimates tend to fall to one side of the dashed line). (A) Significant bias in all interventions (Egger p < 0.001). However, stratification by the median change in LDL showed no evidence of bias. (B) LDL >40% (Egger p = 0.5). (C) LDL 40% (Egger p = 0.7). Abbreviations as in Figure 2.

The plot shows average net change in LDL (placebo – treatment) by the average net change in CRP (placebo – treatment) for the 57 interventions. The size of each circle is proportional to the inverse of the variance of change in CRP, and the dotted line indicates the regression line estimated from the meta-regression analysis. Abbreviations as in Figure 2.