Post-graduate Program in Rehabilitation Sciences, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Araranguá, Santa Catarina, Brazil.
Department of Epidemiology, Federal University of Pelotas, Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
PLoS One. 2021 Nov 8;16(11):e0259498. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0259498. eCollection 2021.
Fibrinogen is an important biomarker of inflammation, but findings from longitudinal studies that correlated fibrinogen with lung function in older adults are inconsistent.
To investigate the relationship between fibrinogen plasma levels and lung function impairment later in life.
Longitudinal analysis of 2,150 participants of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) aged 50 years and older. Associations between changes in plasma fibrinogen between waves 2 (2004-05) and 4 (2008-09) and lung function in wave 6 (2012-13) were performed using multiple linear regression adjusted by potential confounders.
Regarding the fibrinogen profile, 18.5% of the participants presented higher levels in both waves. In the adjusted models, the maintenance of high fibrinogen levels was associated with a significant reduction of lung function only for men. FEV1 showed a reduction of 0.17L, FVC of 0.22L, and the percentages predicted were 5.16% for FEV1 and 6.21% for FVC compared to those that maintained normal levels of fibrinogen.
To the best of our knowledge, this was the first study investigating the relationship between changes in fibrinogen levels over a long follow-up period and lung function in older adults without pre-existing chronic diseases. ELSA has information on critical demographic and clinical parameters, which allowed to adjust for potential confounding factors.
It was found that the persistence of high levels of plasma fibrinogen in older English men, but not women, is associated with lung function decline. Therefore, plasma fibrinogen showed to be an important biomarker of pulmonary dysfunction in this population.
纤维蛋白原是炎症的一个重要生物标志物，但将纤维蛋白原与老年人肺功能相关联的纵向研究结果并不一致。
探讨纤维蛋白原血浆水平与老年人肺功能下降的关系。
对年龄在 50 岁及以上的 2150 名英国老龄化纵向研究（ELSA）参与者进行纵向分析。使用多元线性回归模型，在调整潜在混杂因素后，分析了波 2（2004-05 年）和波 4（2008-09 年）之间纤维蛋白原血浆水平的变化与波 6（2012-13 年）时肺功能的关系。
在纤维蛋白原谱方面，有 18.5%的参与者在两个波次中都呈现出较高的水平。在调整后的模型中，仅男性维持高水平纤维蛋白原与肺功能显著下降相关。与维持正常纤维蛋白原水平的参与者相比，FEV1 降低了 0.17L，FVC 降低了 0.22L，FEV1 和 FVC 的预计百分比分别降低了 5.16%和 6.21%。
据我们所知，这是第一项在没有预先存在的慢性疾病的情况下，研究长时间随访期间纤维蛋白原水平变化与老年人肺功能之间关系的研究。ELSA 有关于关键人口统计学和临床参数的信息，这使得我们能够调整潜在的混杂因素。
研究发现，在老年英国男性中，血浆纤维蛋白原水平持续升高与肺功能下降有关，但在女性中则没有这种关系。因此，血浆纤维蛋白原在该人群中显示出是肺功能障碍的一个重要生物标志物。
