Telomere length and mental well-being in elderly men from the Netherlands and Greece.

Telomeres, repetitive DNA sequences that promote chromosomal stability, have been related to different measures of mental well-being and self-rated health, but mainly in women during adulthood. We aimed to investigate whether accelerated telomere shortening is associated with poor mental well-being and poor self-rated health in community-dwelling elderly men. Leukocyte telomere length was measured using quantitative PCR in two different samples of 203 elderly men (mean age 78 years) from the Netherlands in 1993, and 123 elderly men (mean age 84 years) from Greece in 2000.

Telomere length and mortality in elderly men: the Zutphen Elderly Study.

Telomere shortening is a marker of aging and therefore telomere length might be related to disease progression and survival. To address these questions, we measured leukocyte telomere length (LTL) in male participants from the Zutphen Elderly Study. LTL was measured by quantitative polymerase chain reaction in 203 men: mean aged 78 years in 1993 and 75 surviving participants mean aged 83 years in 2000.

Telomere shortening in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Chronic oxidative stress and systemic inflammation contribute to the pathology of several chronic diseases, one among which is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In addition, increased oxidative stress and inflammation have been observed to be negatively associated with telomere length (TL). Our aim was to investigate the TL in COPD patients in relation to pulmonary and extrapulmonary disease severity.

Telomere length assessment: biomarker of chronic oxidative stress?

Telomeres are nucleoprotein structures, located at the ends of chromosomes and are subject to shortening at each cycle of cell division. They prevent chromosomal ends from being recognized as double strand breaks and protect them from end to end fusion and degradation. Telomeres consist of stretches of repetitive DNA with a high G-C content and are reported to be highly sensitive to damage induced by oxidative stress.

The role of glutathione in the regulation of nucleotide excision repair during oxidative stress.

Nucleotide excision repair (NER) mainly repairs bulky DNA adducts and helix distorting lesions, but is additionally considered to be a back-up system for base excision repair to remove oxidative stress induced DNA damage. Therefore, it can be speculated that NER is up-regulated or primed by oxidative stress. Exposure of human pulmonary epithelial cells (A549) to non-toxic doses of 100muM H(2)O(2) indeed showed a 2 to 4.