Interindividual and intraindividual variability in plasma fibrinogen, TPA antigen, PAI activity, and CRP in healthy, young volunteers and patients with angina pectoris.

We compared intraindividual and interindividual variability in the plasma levels of fibrinogen, tissue-type plasminogen activator (TPA) antigen, plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI) activity, and C-reactive protein (CRP) in 20 healthy, young individuals and 26 patients with stable angina pectoris (AP) who were at higher risk for cardiovascular disease. For each of the four parameters, the contribution of the intraindividual variation to the total variance (13% and 9% for fibrinogen, 3% and 5% for TPA antigen, 4% and 20% for In[PAI activity], and 14% and 9% for In[CRP] for the healthy volunteers and AP patients, respectively) was smaller than the contribution from the interindividual variation. These results indicate that single sampling is sufficient to assess an individual level for TPA antigen and PAI activity, whereas duplicate sampling for fibrinogen and triplicate sampling for CRP are recommended. In an epidemiological study the sample sizes, based on the variances found in the transverse part of the study, needed to detect a 15% difference between the two groups (with alpha = 0.01 and a statistical power = .90) are 31 and 40 for fibrinogen, 568 and 146 for TPA antigen, 603 and 119 for PAI activity, and 1490 and 2263 for CRP in healthy volunteers and patients with AP, respectively. Additionally, we studied the contribution of genetic polymorphisms of the B beta-fibrinogen (Bcl I and G-->A-455) and PAI activity (HindIII and CA-repeat) genes to intraindividual and interindividual variation. Fibrinogen genotypes were associated with plasma fibrinogen levels in the volunteers but not in the AP patients. No effects of fibrinogen or PAI polymorphisms on intraindividual variation were observed in either healthy individuals or AP patients. In this study intraindividual variation in plasma levels of the cardiovascular risk indicators fibrinogen, TPA antigen, PAI activity, and CRP was small when compared with the interindividual variation in healthy, young volunteers and patients with stable AP.