Age-related rise in parathyroid hormone in man: the use of intact and midmolecule antisera to distinguish hormone secretion from retention.

Circulating levels of parathyroid hormone (PTH) rise with age in normal men and women. To resolve the basis for this observation we measured iPTH in 137 normal men and women, age 23 to 85 years, using two antisera which responded to different portions of the PTH molecule. A midmolecule assay (Mid-PTH) employed antiserum NG-5, which recognizes mid- and carboxy-terminal portions of hPTH, whereas antiserum CK-67, which recognizes determinants in the 1-34 hPTH sequence, was used to measure intact PTH (NH2-PTH). Two-hour fasting urine was collected for measurement of creatinine clearance and excretion indices of phosphorus and cyclic AMP. Serum was analyzed for 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25-OHD) in addition to iPTH. Mid-PTH rose significantly with age in the 72 women (r = 0.38, p less than 0.001) and in the 65 men (r = 0.40, p less than 0.001). NH2-PTH rose with age in women (r = 0.23, p less than 0.05), but a change in men was not significant (r = 0.19, n.s.). Cyclic AMP excretion rose significantly with age in both women (r = 0.42) and men (r = 0.41), whereas phosphorus excretion rose significantly in women only (r = 0.32, p less than 0.01). 25-OHD levels were 27.5 +/- 1.3 ng/ml for women and 26.1 +/- 1.2 ng/ml for men. No change in 25-OHD was observed with age in women, and a significant decrease in men was due entirely to extremely high values in three young subjects.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)