Relationship between age and plasma esterases

Introduction: the older population is the most medicated. Despite high drug usage, older people are generally excluded from the research underpinning new drug development. This means that drugs are prescribed to older people with very little understanding of how they are likely to metabolize them. More research is needed to investigate the possible effects of ageing on the biotransformation of drugs. We therefore undertook a cross-sectional study examining the effect of age on the activities of benzoylcholinesterase, butyrylcholinesterase, acetylcholinesterase and aspirin esterase. Methods: we measured the activities of benzoylcholinesterase and butyrylcholinesterase in 70 healthy volunteers aged 18-85 years. We measured the activities of acetylcholinesterase and aspirin esterase in 43 healthy volunteers aged 18-85 years. We determined plasma activities of benzoylcholinesterase, butyrylcholinesterase, acetylcholinesterase and aspirin esterase spectrophotometrically. Results: we found no correlation between the activities of any of the enzymes measured and advancing age. Conclusion: age per se is not associated with reductions in the activities of esterase enzymes.