Distribution of fibrinogen level and its relationship with age, body mass index, smoking and other risk factors of coronary heart disease in healthy Hong Kong Chinese

Abstract

To investigate the distribution of fibrinogen level in healthy Hong Kong Chinese and to explore the relationships of fibrinogen level with other risk factors of coronary heart disease, we aimed to measure plasma fibrinogen in 3000 subjects aged 25-74 years. A standardized questionnaire was used in telephone interview of randomly selected subjects. The subjects were then invited to Queen Mary Hospital (a teaching hospital of the University of Hong Kong) for physical examination and blood taking. The preliminary results in 563 subjects from Hong Kong Island (one of the three regions of Hong Kong) showed that: (1) Fibrinogen level was normally distributed with a slight skew towards the lower levels. Women had a significantly higher mean than men: 2.52 (SD=0.49) g/L vs 2.40 (SD=0.56) g/L (P<0.01). The 5th and 95th percentiles were 1.86 g/L and 3.46 g/L in women and 1.59 g/L and 3.36 g/L in men, respectively. (2) Multiple regression analysis showed that in men, age and smoking (cumulative dose) were positively, and high density lipoprotein cholesterol was negatively related to fibrinogen level. In women, age, low density lipoprotein cholesterol, body mass index and smoking were all positively related to fibrinogen level. (3) The fibrinogen level increased with non-smoker, exsmoker and current smoker status but the trend was not statistically significant. (4) In male current smokers, those who started to smoke before the age of 16 years had higher fibrinogen levels than those who started later (2.81 g/L vs 2.42 g/L, P<0.05). In conclusion, fibrinogen levels in Chinese appear to be similar to those in Japanese and are lower than those in Caucasians, but there are similar correlations with other risk factors for coronary heart disease such as age, body mass index, smoking and lower levels of high density lipoprotein cholesterol. © Pearson Professional Ltd 1996.