The Nation - News from Sept. 4, 1987

Researchers who tracked 1,315 people for 12 years found that high blood levels of a certain clot-causing protein were linked with higher rates of heart attacks. As a result, doctors trying to judge the risk of heart attack should find it as important to know the level of fibrinogen in patients’ blood as to know whether they smoke, are overweight or have high blood pressure, the researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.