CRP and periodontitis: Ljungvall et al. (2010) did not find an association between CRP levels and disease severity, although, similarly to our findings, they reported values above 10 μg/mL in 4 of 18 dogs classified as stage C. Older dogs may exhibit elevated CRP levels due to age-related conditions such as periodontitis or osteoarthritis, which can independently raise systemic inflammation markers (Hurter et al., 2005).