Department of Geriatric Medicine and Metabolic Diseases, IV Divisione di Medicina Interna, Second University of Naples, Piazza Miraglia, 2, 80138 Naples, Italy.
Previous studies demonstrated a relationship between the degree of insulin resistance and plasma plasminogen activator inhibitor type-1 (PAI-1) levels. We aim at investigating the relationship between the degree of insulin resistance and plasma PAI-1 levels in aged subjects (n=83) and in healthy centenarians (n=42). In all subjects the degree of insulin resistance was assessed by HOMA method. Our data demonstrated that healthy centenarians have higher plasma PAI-1 levels (73.1+/-13.9 vs 23.7+/-14.7 ng/ml, P<0.001) and lower degree of insulin resistance (1.4+/-0.5 vs 3.3+/-1.3, P<0.001) than aged subjects. In aged subjects plasma PAI-1 levels correlated with the degree of insulin resistance (r=0.61, P<0.001), fasting plasma triglycerides (r=0.74, P<0.001) and age (r=0.33, P<0.001). All such associations were lost in centenarians. Plasma PAI-1 Ag levels were also similar in aged subjects and centenarians even after categorization for PAI gene polymorphism. In multivariate analysis, a model made by age, sex, body mass index, fasting plasma triglycerides, HOMA and PAI-1 gene explained 65 and 50% of plasma PAI-1 level variations in aged subjects and centenarians, respectively. Nevertheless, HOMA (P<0.001) was significantly and independently associated with plasma PAI-1 levels only in aged subjects. In conclusion, our data demonstrates that in healthy centenarians, plasma PAI-1 were not associated with the degree of insulin resistance as in aged subjects. Frequency of PAI-1 genotype does not provide an explanation for such differences between aged subjects and centenarians.