What does an elevated ESR 53mm/hr mean?

Question

I have Crohns. Is this connected in any way to my existing condition?

Answer 1

An erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) test measures how much clumping of your blood cells is occuring, which happens when there is an inflammatory process in your body. A major reason is that there is a lot more protein in the blood, especially antibodies (some directed toward the blood cells), that causes them to be excessively sticky. When they are sticky, they tend to clump more, and hence they form into 'sediment' in the bottoms of the test tubes. It is measured by how fast sedimentation occurs, or the height in millimeters (mm) of the sediment by hour.

This process is similar to the agglutination tests that are used to figure out infection to certain viruses, but the ESR is much less specific, ie it doesn't tell doctors what is exactly causing the inflammation.

Anything that causes inflammation will elevate the ESR: it could be an infection, an autoimmune disease that is active--like your crohn's--or others like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, even cancer or a drug reaction.

For this reason, the ESR isn't used that often to diagnose disease, but it can be used---along with other markers like SAA, CRP, etc.---to monitor the level of chronic inflammation, when you have already been diagnosed with something like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and gout. This allows doctors to decide whether or not treatment is necessary at the time to prevent autoimmune damage to the body.

This is especially important for people with Crohn's because it can affect so many organs, not just in your GI tract. Minimizing the inflammation will prevent further damage to your body.

Answer 2

53mm/hr means that the red blood cells in a sample settled out much faster than normal. This doesn't mean anything specific, but this a very high rate is characteristic of several diseases or conditions. The test itself helps to narrow down possible causes when a person has an unknown disease or condition. More info at the link:

Answer 3

The ESR is an easy, inexpensive, nonspecific test that has been used for many years to help diagnose conditions associated with acute and chronic inflammation, including infections, cancers, and autoimmune diseases. ESR is said to be nonspecific because increases do not tell the doctor exactly where the inflammation is in your body or what is causing it, and also because it can be affected by other conditions besides inflammation. For this reason, ESR is typically used in conjunction with other tests. ESR is helpful in diagnosing two specific inflammatory diseases, temporal arteritis and polymyalgia rheumatica. A high ESR is one of the main test results used to support the diagnosis. It is also used to monitor disease activity and response to therapy in both of these diseases.