Fibrinogen

If your fibrinogen concentration is elevated due to pregnancy, or to an acute inflammatory process, it will usually return to normal by itself. If it is due to an acquired condition such as rheumatoid arthritis, there may be very little you can do to affect the level. If your doctor has told you that elevated fibrinogen levels are increasing your risk of cardiovascular disease, you can make lifestyle changes that will affect other cardiac risk factors, such as stop smoking, lose weight, increase exercise, reducing your cholesterol and raising your HDL. There is also some evidence that diets rich in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids (fish oils) may help reduce fibrinogen levels.

Fibrinogen measures the soluble Factor I (dissolved in the blood), before it has been turned into insoluble fibrin and been cross-linked into a fibrin net. D-dimer and FDP both help evaluate the status of the fibrinolytic system - the body's ability to break blood clots apart when they are no longer needed so that they can be removed. FDP is a measurement of all of the fragments of fibrinogen or fibrin, while D-dimer was developed as a more specific measurement of fragments of cross-linked fibrin, i.e. derived from an established clot.