Age-related changes in platelet function are more profound in women than in men.

Jonathan Cowman,Dermot Kenny,Bruno Voisin,Irene Oglesby,Sieglinde Müllers,Adam Ralph,Barry Byrne,Antonio J Ricco,Eimear Dunne

doi:10.1038/srep12235

Abstract

Age is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), however the effect of age on platelet function remains unclear. Ideally, platelet function should be assayed under flow and shear conditions that occur in vivo. Our study aimed to characterise the effect of age on platelet translocation behaviour using a novel flow-based assay that measures platelet function in less than 200 μl of blood under conditions of arterial shear. Blood from males (n = 53) and females (n = 56), ranging in age from 19–82 and 21–70 respectively were perfused through custom-made parallel plate flow chambers coated with immobilised human von Willebrand Factor (VWF) under arterial shear (1,500s−1). Platelet translocation behaviour on VWF was recorded by digital-image microscopy and analysed. The study showed that aging resulted in a significant decrease in the number of platelet tracks, translocating platelets and unstable platelet interactions with VWF. These age related changes in platelet function were more profound in women than in men indicating that age and gender significantly impacts on platelet interactions with VWF.

Highlights

Age is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), the effect of age on platelet function remains unclear
Most studies to date have used non-physiological approaches such as light transmission aggregometry (LTA) or flow cytometry to investigate age-related changes in platelet function[1,2,3,4]. These studies have reported that aging results in significant increases in the release of plasma β -thromboglobulin (β TG), plasma platelet factor 4 (PF4), phosphoinositide turnover, platelet aggregation and plasma fibrinogen[5,6,7]
The results of this study demonstrate that age has a significant effect on platelet translocation behaviour on Von Willebrand Factor (VWF)

Summary

Introduction

Age is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), the effect of age on platelet function remains unclear. Our research group has developed a Dynamic Platelet Function Assay (DPFA), using novel parallel plate flow chambers coated with immobilised human VWF and custom-designed platelet tracking software[14]. Aging resulted in a significant reduction in the number of platelet tracks (slope ***p = 0.0004, r2 = 0.1035), translocating platelets (slope **p = 0.0026, r2 = 0.0734) and numbers of unstable platelet interactions (slope ***p < 0.0001, r2 = 0.1598) with VWF.

Results

Conclusion