1. Frailty and telomere length: Cross-sectional analysis in 3537 older adults from the ESTHER cohort.
- Author
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Saum, Kai-Uwe, Dieffenbach, Aida Karina, Müezzinler, Aysel, Müller, Heiko, Holleczek, Bernd, Stegmaier, Christa, Butterbach, Katja, Schick, Matthias, Canzian, Federico, Stammer, Hermann, Boukamp, Petra, Hauer, Klaus, and Brenner, Hermann
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FRAGILITY (Psychology) , *TELOMERES , *CROSS-sectional method , *DNA analysis , *OLDER people , *COHORT analysis - Abstract
Both telomere length and frailty were observed to be associated with aging. Whether and to what extent telomere length is related to frailty is essentially unknown. In this cross-sectional analysis of baseline data of 3537 community-dwelling adults aged 50 to 75 years of a large German cohort study, we assessed the hypothesis that shorter telomere length might be a biological marker for frailty. Using whole blood DNA we examined mean telomere repeat copy to single gene copy number (T/S ratio) using quantitative PCR. Construction of a frailty index (FI) was based on a deficit accumulation approach, which quantifies frailty as ratio of the deficits present divided by the total number of deficits considered. Mean FI was determined according to age by tertiles of T/S ratio. Furthermore, we used correlation analyses stratified for gender and age groups to examine the association of the T/S ratio with frailty. Mean FI value was similar across tertiles of the T/S ratio (0.24 ± 0.14, 0.24 ± 0.14 and 0.23 ± 0.14, respectively (p = 0.09)), and FI and the T/S ratio were uncorrelated in gender- and age-specific analyses. In conclusion, T/S ratio and frailty were unrelated in this large sample of older adults. T/S ratio may therefore not be a meaningful biological marker for frailty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2014
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