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on July 24, 2006

Circulation. 2006
Published online before print July 24, 2006, doi: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.106.634089
A more recent version of this article appeared on August 1, 2006
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Submitted on April 14, 2006
Revised on May 22, 2006
Accepted on May 25, 2006

Additive Value of Immunoassay-Measured Fibrinogen and High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein Levels for Predicting Incident Cardiovascular Events

Samia Mora MD, MHS*, Nader Rifai PhD, Julie E. Buring ScD, and Paul M Ridker MD, MPH

From the Donald W. Reynolds Center for Cardiovascular Research (S.M., J.E.B., P.M.R.), Leducq Center for Molecular and Genetic Epidemiology (S.M., P.M.R.), Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention (S.M., P.M.R.), Division of Preventive Medicine (S.M., J.E.B., P.M.R.), and Division of Cardiovascular Medicine (S.M., P.M.R.), Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass; Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass (J.E.B., P.M.R.); and Department of Laboratory Medicine, Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass (N.R.).

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: smora2{at}partners.org.

Background--Current guidelines suggest measuring high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) as an aid to coronary risk assessment in adults without cardiovascular disease (CVD). Whether other inflammatory biomarkers, such as fibrinogen, add further prognostic information is uncertain.

Methods and Results--In a prospective study of 27 742 initially healthy middle-aged women, the associations of baseline immunoassay fibrinogen and hs-CRP measurements with incident CVD were examined over a 10-year follow-up period. Compared with women in the bottom biomarker quintile, age-adjusted hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals [CIs]) for incident CVD for quintiles 2 to 5 of fibrinogen were 1.10 (0.86 to 1.41), 1.30 (1.03 to 1.65), 1.46 (1.16 to 1.85), and 2.43 (1.95 to 3.02); for hs-CRP they were 1.48 (1.06 to 2.05), 1.70 (1.24 to 2.33), 2.20 (1.63 to 2.96), and 3.24 (2.43 to 4.31). After further adjustment for established risk factors, both biomarkers remained associated (P for trend ≤0.001) with incident CVD (hazard ratio, 1.35; 95% CI, 1.07 to 1.71 for top fibrinogen quintile; and hazard ratio, 1.68; 95% CI, 1.22 to 2.29 for top hs-CRP quintile compared with the bottom quintiles). Further adjustment for the other biomarker resulted in hazard ratios of 1.23 and 1.56 (P for trend=0.02 and 0.002), respectively. Although fibrinogen correlated positively with hs-CRP (rs=0.41, P<0.001), the highest CVD risk was associated with elevated levels of both fibrinogen and hs-CRP: age-adjusted hazard ratio of 3.45 (95% CI, 2.60 to 4.57) for women with fibrinogen >393 mg/dL and hs-CRP >3 mg/L compared with <329 mg/dL and <1 mg/L, respectively.

Conclusions--In this cohort of initially healthy women, baseline levels of fibrinogen measured with a high-quality immunoassay provided additive value to hs-CRP and traditional risk factors in predicting incident CVD.


Key words: acute-phase proteins • C-reactive protein • fibrinogen • inflammation • women




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