Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) have become serious causes of death among old people. Dyslipidemia is one of the most important independent risk factors for CVD [1, 2]. Increasing the awareness and management of patients with dyslipidemia has a positive impact on CVD prevention.
This study was conducted in Hainan to comprehensive investigate the physical condition of the centenarians as well as the associated CVD risk factors. Our results indicated that the difference was statistically significant in TC, TG, LDL-C and HDL-C between males and females. It was also revealed that BMI, WC and WHtR were negatively related with HDL-C levels and positively related with the other CVD risk factors. Furthermore, our results suggested that the presence of dyslipidemia was significantly associated with body size.
Study has shown that the longevity of people has its own characteristics, such as short stature, light weight and more. Consistent with prior studies, our results showed that Hainan centenarians were short in stature (female 143.21±±7.94 cm, male 155.29 ± 7.60 cm), underweight (female 36.24 ± 7.92 kg, male 45.79 ± 7.10 kg), and BMI (17.99 ± 3.50) was far lower than the cut-off values for Asian populations.
Generally, abdominal fat was positively correlated with cardiovascular risk factors. Much research has been proved that the people in the Asian-pacific regions are easy to gain the abdominal obesity. In the study, we observed that female centenarians were often pear-shaped (WHR ≥ 0.8 for women), while males were often apple-shaped (WHR < 0.9 for men). Our results were in line with previous studies [3, 4]. It has been proposed that circulating gonadal steroids determine these sex-specific differences in adipose tissue distribution, which can be observed even after menopause [5]. Moreover, women’s adipose tissue is more favourable to accumulate in the peripheral and gluteofemoral depots to prevent the development of atherosclerosis [6,7,8]. In a word, the fat distribution pattern of women contributes to more healthier metabolic status, and may even take part in the determination of the overall life expectancy.
On the other hand, studies reported that age was one of major risk factors of dyslipidemia, which may be related to hereditary characteristics and degenerative processes as well as adipose tissue distribution and progressive development of insulin resistance [9, 10]. In our study, BMI, WC and WHtR were well-correlated with the serum lipid, and TC, TG, LDL-C and HDL-C were significantly higher in females than males. This may be associated with changes in postmenopausal hormone levels [11]. oestrogen levels are lower, glucose and lipid metabolism may differ significantly [12, 13] . In addition, we observed that BMI and WC were exhibited the relationship with high TG and low HDL-C. This was consistent with some previous studies [9, 11, 14]. Interestingly, the results using multiple logistic regressions indicated that BMI, WC and WHtR were closely related to the incidence of dyslipidemia in femals centenarians, including high TG, high LDL-C and low HDL-C. This suggests that body measurement indices are important non-invasive indicators in evaluating health, which is used to assess lipid metabolism abnormalities. Unfortunately, due to the insufficient number of male centenarians, we failed to complete the multiple logistic regression analysis. We still need to continue our investigation and preserve these precious data to further guide our research.