In conclusion, our study suggests that serum lipid parameters and genetic polymorphisms may play a role in successful aging in healthy elderly men. The association found between PON genetic polymorphism and aging supports the hypothesis that higher PON activity is beneficial for successful aging. Further studies are needed to confirm these findings and to investigate the potential therapeutic implications.For CVD, some studies have shown associations between the Arg192Gln polymorphism of PON and myocardial or CVD risk, while others have not found evidence of such associations. However, in our study, we did not find statistically significant differences in lipid profiles between various PON genotypes (data not shown). The observed association between PON polymorphism and the mean AI values obtained in each PON genotype may be partly explained by the multiple implications of PON polymorphism in lipid metabolism and by the new physiological role of PON activity in the hydrolysis of lipid hydroperoxides generated in lipoproteins upon oxidative stress. The difference in age (about 30 years) between our study and the two above studies on French centenarians may also explain the difference in results. Many studies have failed to show an association between MTHFR polymorphism and longevity in European populations (28). However, Heijmans et al. (29) found a decrease in the allele frequency of MTHFR 677T in an elderly European population compared with young controls (4.4 vs 12.2%), and concluded that this gene variant (677T) leads to a risk of mortality 3.7-fold higher in elderly subjects. Perhaps our sample size prevented us from obtaining similar results. To our knowledge, no study has investigated the association of CBS and LPL polymorphisms with aging, and we did not demonstrate any significant association in this study.

Besides the fact that TC is part of the estimate of BA, significant correlations of TC, TG, and apoB concentrations with AI may be due to their implication in CVD, which reduces successful aging. However, Kervinen et al. (6) found concentrations of TC and LDL-C to be lower in the elderly population. The work of Strandberg et al. (30) also showed a decreased concentration of TC with age in an elderly population, perhaps explained by less physical activity, or by changes in nutritional status, and the lower need for lipids in the metabolism in the elderly population.

CONCLUSIONS

We report here that PON polymorphism at codon 192, basal PON activity, and serum concentration of TG are biological determinants of the aging indicator, and suggest that they should be taken into account when studying aging in an elderly male population. It seems that carriers of the Arg allele are more protected against aging than Gln/Gln homozygous subjects. Because of the smallness of our sample size and the poor level of significance, these results need to be validated in further studies composed of a larger number of subjects.

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