Telomere length and mortality: a study of leukocytes in elderly Danish twins.
Leukocyte telomere length, representing the mean length of all telomeres in leukocytes, is ostensibly a bioindicator of human aging. The authors hypothesized that shorter telomeres might forecast imminent mortality in elderly people better than leukocyte telomere length. They performed mortality analysis in 548 same-sex Danish twins (274 pairs) aged 73-94 years, of whom 204 pairs experienced the death of one or both co-twins during 9-10 years of follow-up (1997-2007). From the terminal restriction fragment length (TRFL) distribution, the authors obtained the mean TRFL (mTRFL) and the mean values of the shorter 50% (mTRFL(50)) and shortest 25% (mTRFL(25)) of TRFLs in the distribution and computed the mode of TRFL (MTRFL). They analyzed the proportions of twin pairs in which the co-twin with the shorter telomeres died first. The proportions derived from the intrapair comparisons indicated that the shorter telomeres predicted the death of the first co-twin better than the mTRFL did (mTRFL: 0.56, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.49, 0.63; mTRFL(50): 0.59, 95% CI: 0.52, 0.66; mTRFL(25): 0.59, 95% CI: 0.52, 0.66; MTRFL: 0.60, 95% CI: 0.53, 0.67). The telomere-mortality association was stronger in years 3-4 than in the rest of the follow-up period, and it grew stronger with increasing intrapair difference in all telomere parameters. Leukocyte telomere dynamics might help explain the boundaries of the human life span.
Kimura
Masayuki
M
Center of Human Development and Aging, New Jersey Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, NJ 07103, USA.
Hjelmborg
Jacob V B
JV
Gardner
Jeffrey P
JP
Bathum
Lise
L
Brimacombe
Michael
M
Lu
Xiaobin
X
Christiansen
Lene
L
Vaupel
James W
JW
Aviv
Abraham
A
Christensen
Kaare
K
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D003718:Denmark / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007962:Leukocytes; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009026:Mortality / Q000639:trends*; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D016615:Telomere / Q000648:ultrastructure*