Rheological importance of acute-phase reactants.

Acute vascular events, and also chronic atherosclerotic vascular disease, are associated with a rise in blood level of several acute-phase reactants. Of these, fibrinogen is of particular rheological importance since hyperfibrinogenaemia causes hyperviscosity of plasma and whole blood and is an adverse prognostic factor in intermittent claudication, coronary artery disease, and stroke. Activation of the monocyte-macrophage system by fibrinogen degradation products, with release of interleukin-1 and secondary stimulation of liver and bone marrow, may be of pathogenic importance in the stress responses of acute and chronic vascular disease.