LABORATORY PARAMETERS OF ITALIAN CENTENARIANS

A consortium of 20 university departments of geriatrics and gerontolog y conducted the Italian Multicentric Study on Centenarians (IMSC), in order to assess the socio-economic, clinical and biological conditions of the Italian centenarians. The investigation involved 382 subjects randomly selected from a total of 1162 centenarians (234 men and 928 w omen), recorded by a census carried out until 31 December, 1993. Their case history, clinical and socio-economic data were recorded on a com puterized clinical case sheet. Blood samples for the purpose of the pr esent investigations were drawn from 257 of them. A great proportion ( 79%) of these latter subjects displayed satisfactory general condition s in their laboratory parameters, 18.3% of them had fairly good clinic al conditions even with slightly modified laboratory parameters. Only a low percentage (2.8%) had poor general conditions with a marked anem ia, hyperazotemia and uric acid levels. Long duration diabetes was pra ctically absent, and only 5.5% of our centenarians displayed hyperglyc emia with a mean duration time of 9.3 years. The prevalence of subject s with hypercholesterolemia was 31.1%. Only 4.3% of centenarians was a ffected by mixed form of dyslipidemia (hypertriglyceridemia associated with hypercholesterolemia), confirming that elevated blood lipid cont ents jeopardize really long survival. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier S cience Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.