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. 2010 Jun;31(6):986-92.
doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2008.07.012. Epub 2008 Aug 20.

Leukocyte telomere length is associated with cognitive performance in healthy women

A M Valdes  1 , I J Deary, J Gardner, M Kimura, X Lu, T D Spector, A Aviv, L F Cherkas
Affiliations

Leukocyte telomere length is associated with cognitive performance in healthy women

A M Valdes et al. Neurobiol Aging. 2010 Jun.

Abstract

Background: Age-related cognitive decline begins in mid-life and continues with advancing age. Leukocyte telomere length (LTL) shortens with age, and inflammation and oxidative stress enhance this process. Shorter LTL is associated with dementia.

Methods: The relationship between cognitive function and LTL was investigated in a cross-sectional study of 382 women (mean age 50.6 years, range 19-78), not diagnosed with any form of dementia or cognitive impairment, from the TwinsUK cohort using six tests from the Cambridge neuropsychological test automated battery (CANTAB).

Results: After adjusting for age and estimated prior intellectual ability, we observed significant correlations of LTL with episodic memory and associated learning (PAL, p=0.032), recognition memory for non-verbal patterns (DMS, p=0.007), and working memory capacity (SSP, p=0.003). In pairs of twins discordant for LTL the twin with longer telomeres also had significantly better DMS (p<0.05) and SSP (p<0.013) scores than their co-twin with shorter telomeres. The correlations between these two scores and LTL was significant both in women over the median mean age and in those below the median age, and remained significant after statistical adjustment for potential confounders.

Conclusions: Leukocyte telomere length correlates with a subset of measures of cognitive performance, suggesting that it might be a biomarker of cognitive aging in women before the onset of dementia.

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Conflict of interest statement

Disclosure Statement

All authors report no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Adjusted mean leukocyte telomere length adjusted for tertiles of six CANTAB scores. For all CANTAB scores T1 indicates the tertile with the best performance T2 the middle tertile and T3 the tertile with the worst performance. For PAL, RTI and SWM the best tertile (T1) is the tertile with the lowest scores, for DMS, PRM and SSP the best tertile (T1) is the tertile with the highest value. The mean score value for each tertile is shown. Results are adjusted for NART score, and age.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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