A Role of Plasma Fibrinogen in Patients with Diabetes Mellitus

Abstract

A study was showed that plasma fibrinogen might play an important role of diabetes mellitus with vascular complications.
100 cases in untreated diabetics were chosen. The blood sample was taken after overnight fasting and serum lipids fraction (cholesterol, neutral fat and free fatty acid) and plasma fibrinogen content were measured immediatly.
When compared with normal healthy group, the diabetic group had high concentration of serum lipids and plasma fibrinogen. Especially the level of serum lipids in all diabetics showed a statistically significant increase from normal.
The diabetics were classified into three groups according to the kind of vascular complications in diabetes. The plasma fibrinogen increased in all patients with one or other kinds of vascular diabetic complications. And the group with microangiopathy in whom diabetic retinopathy and nephropathy were included, had higher fibrinogen concentration than the diabetics without complication. Further higher level of fibrinogen was noticed significantly in the group with cardiovascular complication that was represented as clinically hypertension and ischemic heart disease. The markedly higher increase of fibrinogen was proved to the complicated group with both microangiopathy and cardiovascular complication.
In the case accompaning vascular complication in diabetes, it was stated that the level of plasma fibrinogen was increasing more than that of the non-complicated group. Therefore it was suggested that a rate of fibrinogen increment might reflect the characteristic condition of vascular complication in diabetes.
It was carried out to clarify a correlation between serum lipids levels and vascular complication in diabetes. The increase of neutral fat in serum lipids was closely related to the presence of vascular complication with both microangiopathy and cardiovascular complication, in spite of the evidence that cholesterol in all diabetic patients was raised higher value than normal.
From the above, it was concluded that the course of vascular complication in diabetes had distinctly followed the increase of plasma fibrinogen rather than the serum lipids.
This finding was interesting fact for the pathogenesis of vascular complication in diabetes mellitus. And it was emphasized that the measurement of plasma fibrinogen was useful to know the prognosis on vascular complication in diabetes mellitus.