Plasma fibrinogen lever and risk of coronary heart disease among Chinese population: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Coronary heart disease (CHD) remains the leading causes of death and disability for men and women in most developed countries. It may soon become the leading cause of death in developing countries. Several studies have examined the role of fibrinogen levels in the prediction of atherosclerosis and CHD events. The aim of this study was to explore the effects of plasma fibrinogen levels in Chinese patients with CHD and to examine the relationship of fibrinogen. We performed this meta-analysis of prospective studies of plasma fibrinogen level in relation to CHD risk in electronic database of Medline, EMBase, the Cochrane Library and CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure). Plasma fibrinogen levels were calculated by mean difference with 95% confidence intervals (CI) in patients with CHD and related controls without CHD. The selected 23 studies included 2984 CHD cases and 2279 controls. Our results found that plasma fibrinogen levels of patients were significantly higher than control group (P<0.0001). The predicted odds ratio (OR) for a 1 g/L higher plasma fibrinogen level was 0.94 (95% CI=0.78-1.10). Furthermore, fibrinogen levels were slightly related to age-related CHD patients. The plasma fibrinogen lever was correlated with CHD in the Chinese population, and may be a risk factor and predictor of CHD. Further studies assessing any causal relevance of fibrinogen levels to disease are required.