Even as fibrinogen is an FDA qualified prognostic biomarker in COPD, it still lacks sufficient resolution to be clinically useful. A new study by a team of scientists in the Netherlands, suggests that fibrinogen is often found useful when combinations with other validated biomarkers are investigated. The new study, published in Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, confirmed in a large well-defined population of COPD patients that a combination with the biomarker MR-proADM could increase prognostic accuracy compared with fibrogen alone. The researchers said that from the COMIC cohort study, they included COPD patients with a blood sample obtained in stable state (n = 640) and/or at hospitalization for an acute exacerbation of COPD (n = 262): “When both fibrinogen and MR-proADM were included in the survival model, a doubling in fibrinogen and MR-proADM levels gave a 2.2 (95% CI 1.3–3.7) and 2.1 (95% CI 1.5–3.0) fold increased risk of dying, respectively. The prediction model for death after 1 year improved significantly when MR-proADM was added to the model with fibrinogen (AUC increased from 0.78 to 0.83; p = 0.02).”

However, the study found, the combined model was not significantly more adequate than the model with solely MR-proADM (AUC 0.83 vs 0.82; p = 0.34). So it suggested that MR-proADM is more promising than fibrinogen in predicting mortality. Adding fibrinogen to a model containing MR-proADM also did not significantly increase the predictive capacity of the model, the researchers said.