Hyperfibrinogenemia as an Important Risk Factor for Microvascular Complications in NIDDM Patients

Kim, Suk Kyeong; Park, Hyeong Kyu; Kim, Sun Wook; Park, Do Joon; Shin, Chan Soo; Kim, Seong Yeon; Cho, Bo Youn; Lee, Hong Kyu

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Abundant evidences have accumulated to suggest that atherosclerosis is accelerated in both type I and type Il diabetes but, traditional risk factors(hyperlipidemia, hypertension, smoking, age, obesity) do not account fully for the increased prevalence and severity of vascular diseases in diabetes. In this study, we examined the relationship of plasma fibrinogen to microvascular complications in NIDDM patients
METHODS
In this cross-sectional study, 104 NIDDM patients were chosen from subjects who were attending the metabolic ward of Seoul National University Hospital. None of them were smokers, nor had any clinical evidences of acute infections, cancers or liver diseases. Arnong 104 patients, 55 patients (male 26, fernale 29) had no evidence of microvascular complications and 49(male 30, female 19) had one or moe microvascular complications. Their mean age(55.7+11.6 and 57.2+8.9 years old) and BMI (23.34+2.98 kg/m and 23.74+3.41 kg/m) were similar between two groups. This study defined microvascular complications as follows: 1) retinopathy classified based on fundoscopic and fluorescein angiographic assessmeot to background and proliferative, 2) nephropathy defined by 24 hour urine protein over 500mg, and 3) pheripheral neuropathy assessed by symptoms or NCV.
RESULTS
1) Clinically, there was no differences between two groups with respect to diastolic BP, C-peptide, HbA1c, and triglyceride level. However statistically significant differences were noted in systolic blood pressure, and total and LDL-cholesterol. Also mean fibrinogen level was more elevated significantly in diabetic patients with microvascular complications than those without microvascular complications. 2) Univariate analysis shows significant correlations between fibrinogen and the other variables such as duration of diabetes, total cholesterol level and systolic blood pressure. 3) However, fibrinogen concentration was higher in NIDDM patients with microvascuiar complications regardless of duration of diabetes, hypertension and HbA1c in multivariate logisric regression analysis (P=0.010). Conclusions: These results indicated that hyperfibrinogenemia were observed in NIDDM patient with microvascular complications regardless of duration of diabetes, systolic BP, and total cholesterol. Therefore our study suggests that hyperfibrogenemia may be one of the important missing links in the pathogenesis of diabetic microvascular diseases.