Association of telomere shortening in myocardium with heart weight gain and cause of death

Masanori Terai,Akio Ishii,Kaiyo Takubo,Mutsunori Fujiwara,Motoji Sawabe,Naotaka Izumiyama-Shimomura,Junko Aida,Naoshi Ishikawa,Tomio Arai,Ken-Ichi Nakamura

doi:10.1038/srep02401

Abstract

We attempted to clarify myocardial telomere dynamics using samples from 530 autopsied patients using Southern blot analysis. Overall regression analysis demonstrated yearly telomere reduction rate of 20 base pairs in the myocardium. There was a significant correlation between myocardial telomere and aging. Moreover, regression analyses of telomere and heart weight yielded a telomere reduction rate of 3 base pairs per gram, and a small but significant correlation between telomere reduction and heart weight was demonstrated. Hearts of autopsied patients who had died of heart disease were significantly heavier than those of patients who had died of cancer or other diseases, and heart disease was significantly more correlated with myocardial telomere shortening than cancer or other diseases. Here we show that telomeres in myocardial tissue become shortened with aging and heart disease, and that heart disease was associated with a gain of heart weight and telomere shortening in the myocardium.

Highlights

We attempted to clarify myocardial telomere dynamics using samples from 530 autopsied patients using Southern blot analysis
We show that telomeres in myocardial tissue become shortened with aging and heart disease, and that heart disease was associated with a gain of heart weight and telomere shortening in the myocardium
Supplementary information (A) shows a representative 1% agarose gel electrophoretogram stained with ethidium bromide for measurement of telomere length showing genomic DNA digested by HinfI (1) and non-digested genomic DNA (2) from 8 samples employed for verifying the process of digestion, including molecular size markers

Summary

Introduction

We attempted to clarify myocardial telomere dynamics using samples from 530 autopsied patients using Southern blot analysis. Overall regression analysis demonstrated yearly telomere reduction rate of 20 base pairs in the myocardium. We previously demonstrated that the yearly telomere reduction rate in 168 samples of myocardium from the anterior wall of the cardiac left ventricle was 13 base pairs, being similar to that in other human tissues and organs[5]. As measured in human tissues by Southern blot analysis, demonstrates a very large standard deviation among individuals, attention has been concentrated on different tissues from many subjects[7,8,9]. The yearly telomere reduction rates in human tissues and organs have been reported to be similar, at about 30–60 base pairs[5]. In the present study using Southern blotting, we measured telomere in samples of myocardial tissue from a large sample of 530 autopsy cases covering a wide age range, from neonates to centenarians. We analyzed the relationship between myocardial telomere and heart weight for major causes of death among the individuals examined

Methods

Results

Conclusion