Aging can be interpreted as an unavoidable process whose end point is the death. Aging entails, in the hemostasis field, some changes that favour blood hypercoagulability. Both the plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI-1), specific inhibitor of the tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA), accompanied by the oxidative stress and the marked decrease of the main antioxidant-glutathione are fundamental in the bases of elderly pathologies which can cause death. There is some scientific evidence of the relationship between aging, neuro-degenerative diseases, an excessive production of reactive oxygen species and the decrease of proteolysis in brain. The cerebral plasminogen/plasmin system represents the essential proteolytic mechanism that degrades amyloid peptides (βamyloidosis) for action of plasmin with effectiveness. This physiologic process is being considered as a preventive neurodegenerative mechanism. At the same time, the decrease of glutathione levels in aging entails a decrease of cerebral plasmin activity and a progressive descent of t-PA activity due to a descent in t-PA expression and an increase in PAI production. All of them entail an increment of amyloid beta peptides (Aβ) production and a lower level of their clearance. Both mechanisms, oxidative stress, direct consequence of the oxygenate metabolism of aerobics cells, and changes in the systemic fibrinolysis and cerebral b-amyloidolytic activity, play a very important role in thromboembolic disease, metabolic syndrome-obesity, insulin resistance, hyperglycemia-, type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Alzheimer's disease, clinical processes that accompany the aging. In this revision we show the importance of the interaction between glutathione, proteolytic t-PA/plasminogen/plasmin system, and the inhibitor PAI-1 in aging physiopathology, whose results suggest the hypothesis of the importance of a therapeutic strategy using the inhibition of

The purpose of this prospective study is to determine the relative incidence of Alzheimer's disease in patients treated for at least three years, with sulodexide (n = 46, 76.48 ± 7.02 years old) or acenocoumarol (n = 47, 78.21 ± 6.66 years old) in order to prevent primary and secondary venous thromboembolism and atherothrombotic disease. In the sulodexide group, there was an apparent prevention of cognitive and behavioural impairment (relative incidence: 2.02) compared with acenocoumarol group (relative incidence: 4.86). The favourable results in sulodexide group may be related to their pharmacodynamic actions of inhibition of PAI-1, which may interfere with the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease, and to the role of glutathione and PAI-1 in the β-amyloid system in the brain.

Stress, inflammation and Plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (PAI-1) are key mechanisms throughout the development of aging, constituting a crossroad in the most frequent pathologies that accompany it. Among metabolic processes, obesity, metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes mellitus are included and Alzheimer's disease among the neurodegenerative processes. Stress is a mechanism of defense of the organism against exogenous and endogenous actions called stressors. In the case of low intensity stimuli, the organism responds with actions aimed at a physiological adaptation (Homeostasis). On the other hand, when a high intensity (experimental level) or chronic stimulus (oxidative stress) is repeated, structural and functional changes are observed in different organs with activation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis, the renin angiotensin system and the sympathetic nervous system, stimulating the production of hormones that release cytokines with proinflammatory/antiinflammatory properties that play an important role in the previously mentioned pathologies, as well as a marked increase in PAI-1, a gene regulated by stress and by cytokines, with manifest action at the origin of thromboembolic disease, so frequent in aging. The objective of this review is to highlight the importance of the binomial stress and PAI-1 in aging and in the pathologies that accompany it. Because PAI-1 is part of the pathology and complications in aging, some authors suggest the study of PAI-1 inhibitors to achieve its physiological levels, as part of the treatment of these diseases.