Abstract
BackgroundTelomeres are involved in cellular ageing and shorten with increasing age. If telomere length is a valuable biomarker of ageing, then telomere shortening should be associated with worse physical performance, an ageing trait, but evidence for such an association is lacking. The purpose of this study was to examine whether change in telomere length is associated with physical performance.MethodsUsing data from four UK adult cohorts (ages 53–80 years at baseline), we undertook cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. We analysed each study separately and then used meta-analytic methods to pool the results. Physical performance was measured using walking and chair rise speed, standing balance time and grip strength. Telomere length was measured by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in whole blood at baseline and follow-up (time 1, time 2).ResultsTotal sample sizes in meta-analyses ranged from 1,217 to 3,707. There was little evidence that telomere length was associated with walking speed, balance or grip strength, though weak associations were seen with chair rise speed and grip strength at baseline (p = 0.02 and 0.01 respectively). Faster chair rise speed at follow-up, was associated with a smaller decline in telomere length between time 1 and time 2 (standardised coefficient per SD increase 0.061, 95% CI 0.006, 0.115, p = 0.03) but this was consistent with chance (p = 0.08) after further adjustment.ConclusionsWhereas shortening of leukocyte telomeres might be an important measure of cellular ageing, there is little evidence that it is a strong biomarker for physical performance.
Highlights
Telomeres are nucleoprotein complexes at chromosome ends, where the DNA component is a repetitive stretch of (TTAGGG), which caps and protects the end of the chromosome
Since telomeres are involved in cellular ageing and shorten with increasing age, it has been proposed that telomere length could be a useful biomarker of ageing [1]
Our results show that change in telomere length was associated with quicker chair rise speed at time 2 but this was consistent with chance in the fully adjusted model
Summary
Telomeres are nucleoprotein complexes at chromosome ends, where the DNA component is a repetitive stretch of (TTAGGG), which caps and protects the end of the chromosome. Since telomeres are involved in cellular ageing and shorten with increasing age, it has been proposed that telomere length could be a useful biomarker of ageing [1]. Physical performance can be assessed using simple, objective measures such as chair rise time, grip strength, standing balance and walking speed [9]. We are aware of only four studies which have examined the associations between telomere length and objective measures of physical performance [10,11,12,13] None of these studies found evidence of an association between telomere length and grip strength [10,11,12,13]. If telomere length is a valuable biomarker of ageing, telomere shortening should be associated with worse physical performance, an ageing trait, but evidence for such an association is lacking. The purpose of this study was to examine whether change in telomere length is associated with physical performance
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