Nevertheless, the studied groups were small both in the cited 124 centenarians and in our study of 205 elder- ly individuals. Therefore it cannot be excluded that dif- ferences between the results of these two studies are due to small numbers with the resulting statistical conse- quences. Moreover, we chose a group of of persons who were 10–20 years younger than the centenarians, and this may also have contributed to the differing results.

On the basis of the results of our own study we sus- pect that other genetic variables and environmental con- ditions may be stronger predictors of longevity than the 4G/5G PAI-1 polymorphism. However, it should be ac- knowledged that the method of investigating single gene polymorphisms may identify only genes with a mono- causal genetic impact on health risks. Multiple logistic functions linking numerous genotypical and phenotypi- cal characteristics are probably needed to determine indi- vidual risk, thus identifying high risk groups. Neverthe- less, genotyping of PAI-1 polymorphism may be useful for predicting and preventing thrombosis-related events [19, 24, 31], although, in conclusion of our study results, the 4G/5G polymorphism cannot discriminate individu- als with a high mortality risk. Our data suggest that the allele-distribution of the 4G/5G polymorphism of the PAI-1 gene is not markedly different in a cohort of per- sons 80 years or older than in several other published studies investigating other age ranges.

Acknowledgement We thank Dr. Olfert Landt (TIB MOBIOL, Berlin, Germany) for the construction of the Light-Cycler hybrid- ization probes.

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