ABSTRACT
Background: Diabetic hypertensive patients have higher cardiovascular morbidity and mortality than general population. Various risk factors like age, BMI (Body mass index), hypertension, smoking, dyslipidemia, etc. have been extensively studied, but still these together cannot explain increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in diabetes. Several studies have shown that fibrinogen is a powerful independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Hence fibrinogen levels and its correlation to lipoproteins in diabetic hypertensives were studied. Objective: To estimate plasma fibrinogen levels in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and hypertension and to correlate plasma fibrinogen with Lipoproteins and also with BMI. Materials and Methods: A Prospective cross sectional study conducted in a tertiary care hospital. Data collected by simple random sampling method and analysis of various parameters done by using chi square-test and correlated with pearson’s correlation coefficient “r”. Results: The higher plasma fibrinogen levels were found in diabetic hypertensives (449.06 ± 131.26) when compared to controls. The mean total cholesterol, TG (triglycerides), LDL (Low density lipoprotein), VLDL (Very low density lipoprotein), HDL (High density lipoprotein) among cases were 195.82 ± 26.92 mg/dl, 243.62 ± 45.83 mg/dl, 104.15 ± 25.76 mg/dl, 48.72 ± 9.17 mg/dl, 38.21 ± 4.03 mg/dl respectively and the mean BMI of cases was 26.16 ± 5.36 kg/m2. The plasma fibrinogen is positively correlated to BMI and total cholesterol levels which is statistically significant. Conclusion: The plasma fibrinogen levels could potentially be considered for screening programs to identify people at high risk of vascular events.