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Abstracts

Longer telomeres equal longer life

Chromosomes have nucleoprotein caps called telomeres that tend to shorten with age, a process that has been linked to increasing risk of cancer and death. Researchers recently confirmed the association in a cohort of 787 Italian adults, who had their telomeres measured in 1995 then again in 2005. Researchers tracked deaths and cancers in the cohort until 2010.

In fully adjusted analyses, adults with the shortest telomeres in 1995 were three times more likely to develop cancer (hazard ratio 3.02 (95% CI 1.84 - 4.97)) and eight times more likely to die from cancer (8.17 (2.86 - 23.29)) than those with the longest telomeres. Results were similar in analyses using an average of the two measurements, instead of baseline telomere length, and the link was independent of more than a dozen potential confounders including age, sex, social class, smoking, drinking, inflammatory markers and chronic infection.

Participants were at least middle-aged when recruited, and 137 developed cancer during 15 years of follow-up – enough to establish a general association, but not enough to explore different cancer types, say the authors. Mortality analyses included just 62 deaths, so the confidence intervals around these results are very wide.

Hampton T. JAMA 2011;306:42-44.

BRIDGET FARHAM

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