Kidney360
Department of Nephrology, Hypertension, Dialysis and Transplantation, University Hospital Center Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia.
Published: December 2024
Key Points: Longer telomeres are associated with less cardiovascular mortality in patients undergoing chronic hemodialysis. In patients with Balkan endemic nephropathy, telomere length was negatively associated with arterial stiffness and positively associated with survival. The association of Balkan endemic nephropathy with slower vascular aging and longer telomere length may partially explain this phenomenon.
Background: Balkan endemic nephropathy (BEN) is characterized with later onset and milder forms of hypertension and lower pulse wave velocity than other ESKD. Longer telomeres are associated with better cardiovascular (CV) prognosis. Therefore, we hypothesized that telomere length (TL) could be longer in patients with BEN compared with other patients with ESKD.
Methods: A total of 124 patients undergoing hemodialysis (68 BEN, 56 non-BEN) were enrolled and followed-up for 72 months. TL was measured in leukocytes by Southern blot at inclusion.
Results: Age- and sex-adjusted TL was significantly longer in the BEN group ( < 0.001). TL was negatively associated with carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity in patients with BEN. Patients with BEN had significantly lower CV mortality than patients with non-BEN ESKD ( < 0.001). In the BEN group, shorter TL (1 kb change) was the only determinant of shorter survival (hazard ratio, 0.11). Using the TL threshold defined by receiver operating characteristic analysis (TL <6.21 kb), we showed in both groups significantly higher CV mortality in the presence of short telomeres (log-rank [Mantel- < 0.001]).
Conclusions: Longer telomeres are associated with less CV mortality in patients undergoing chronic hemodialysis. Patients with BEN had longer TL and longer survival than that of patients with other ESKD. In patients with BEN, TL was negatively associated with arterial stiffness and positively associated with survival. This study confirmed our hypothesis that BEN is associated with slower vascular aging and that longer TL may partially explain this phenomenon.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.34067/KID.0000000603 | DOI Listing |
J Aging Health
January 2025
Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Michigan School of Public Health, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
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Sci Rep
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Department of Thoracic Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, 350005, China.
Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), half of which are lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD), is one of the most widely spread cancers in the world. Telomerase, which maintains telomere length and chromosomal integrity, enables cancer cells to avoid replicative senescence. When telomerase is inhibited, cancer cells' senescence began, preventing them from growing indefinitely.
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Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA.
Segmental duplications (SDs) contribute significantly to human disease, evolution and diversity but have been difficult to resolve at the sequence level. We present a population genetics survey of SDs by analyzing 170 human genome assemblies (from 85 samples representing 38 Africans and 47 non-Africans) in which the majority of autosomal SDs are fully resolved using long-read sequence assembly. Excluding the acrocentric short arms and sex chromosomes, we identify 173.
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Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Box 210, 171 77, Stockholm, Sweden.
Biomarkers of ageing (BA) can predict health risks beyond chronological age, but little is known about how marital/living status affects longitudinal changes in BA. We examined the association between marital/living status and BA over time using the-Swedish-Adoption/Twin-Study-of-Aging (SATSA) cohort. Four BAs were analyzed: telomere length (TL) (638 individuals; 1603 measurements), DNAmAge (535 individuals; 1392 measurements), cognition (823 individuals; 3218 measurements), and frailty index (FI) (1828 individuals; 9502 measurements).
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Département de Biologie, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC J1K 2R1, Canada.
To achieve replicative immortality, cancer cells must activate telomere maintenance mechanisms. In 10 to 15% of cancers, this is enabled by recombination-based alternative lengthening of telomeres pathways (ALT). ALT cells display several hallmarks including heterogeneous telomere length, extrachromosomal telomeric repeats, and ALT-associated PML bodies.
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