ESR is an indirect measure of the degree of inflammation present in the body. I think the normal is 0-20 ..not 100% sure tho...I hope that was a litttle bit helpful. ESR is also called "sed rate"


Kim

I looked at my ESR it was 60 and flagged as high...I can look at all my tests online so it was easy to look it up...hope that helped you a little bit..i remember always wondering what all those tests ment..it can be frustrating i know..

Kim

Yes, 0-20 is considered normal, anything above will be flagged as high. sed rate is an indicator of inflammation. Another inflammatory marker is c-reactive protein.

When I first went to the doc my sed rate was 83...I thought she told me that 30 was the norm. It affirmed for me that I wasn't nuts, I really was sick with pain, exhaustion and a general malaise.

Getting my head around what is normal and what isn't with RA is a work in progress.
Normal for RF is 0 to 9
Normal for ESR, as Kim and AoifeO say, is less than 20 and normal for the c-Reactive Protein is 0 to 10 In December, when I first saw the Rheumatologist, my blood results were RA 582, ESR 177 and CRP was 27.4. Needless to say, it backed up his dx of RA, even though it was only in the previous 10 weeks that I had pain and swelling.
I'm interested to see if there's any change in my most recent blood tests when I see him the week after next.
So sorry this "beast" has decided to visit you, or anyone else.

Your CRP is very high, are you on a low fat diet, that will bring it more into the normal range. Mine was almost 10 and I got on a no fat diet and the last test showed 0.81. So diet does help.
Alot of Dr.s take the CRP now as a standard test for Heart Disease.
bigi

Here is a good link for CRP

http://heartdisease.about.com/cs/riskfactors/a/CRP.htm

CB

Bigiblue and Chuck, I had no idea CRP was linked to heart . I thought it was just an inflammatory marker.
Thanks bigi for your advice about a low fat diet.
Thanks, Chuck for that website. I'll check it out very soon. lololol