Telomere as a possible marker for aging of cardiovascular system

A chronological aging does not always parallel a biological aging, but any, useful biomarker for the latter is not available. Telomeres undergo progressive attrition with each replicative cycle of the cell, eventually triggering a conversion into an aged phenotype of the cell. We hypothesized that the mean telomere length in tissues could be a useful marker for the biological aging of the tissues. We found that the mean telomere length of leukocytes decreases with age, but the extent of which is greater in patients with cardiovascular disease. When cardiovascular damage was estimated by scoring the presence of cardiovascular risk factors and history of cardiovascular events, the score was negatively correlated with telomere length of leukocytes, independently of the age of subjects. These observations support a notion that the leukocyte telomere length is a possible biomarker for cardiovascular aging.