Acetylator Phenotype in Relation to Age and Gender in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging

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Abstract
This study investigated in healthy Caucasians the possible occurrence of age and gender‐associated differences in NAT2 acetylator phenotype. Acetylator phenotype was determined after a single oral dose of 100 mg dapsone during testing of oral glucose tolerance in 510 Caucasian volunteers aged from 19 to 93 years, 339 men and 171 women, from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. Participants were classified as slow or rapid acetylators according to the ratio of monoacetyldapsone to dapsone concentration in plasma. The ratio dividing the two groups, 0.30, was chosen after inspection of a probit plot and histogram of the monoacetyldapsone/dapsone ratios. Fifty‐one percent of the participants were slow acetylators and 49% were rapid acetylators. Because there was no significant difference between the sexes in the monoacetyldapsone/dapsone ratios, all 510 participants were pooled into a single group for further analysis. In the combined analysis, there was a small decline in the prevalence of the slow acetylator phenotype with age, but this age effect accounted for less than 1% of the total variance in the monoacetyldapsone/dapsone ratio (r2 = 0.009). Also, it was shown in a group of 20 participants that administration of glucose with dapsone does not influence the determination of acetylator phenotype. In a large healthy Caucasian‐American population, there was no biologically important effect of age or sex on the distribution of NAT2 acetylator phenotype.