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Telomere length and risk of Parkinson's disease |
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| Authors: | Hao Wang MD PhD Honglei Chen MD PhD Xiang Gao PhD Monica McGrath ScD Dwayne Deer BS Immaculata De Vivo PhD MPH Michael A. Schwarzschild MD PhD Alberto Ascherio MD DrPH |
| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts;2. Epidemiology Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina;3. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts;4. Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts;5. Program in Molecular and Genetic Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts;6. Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts |
| Abstract: | We investigated whether telomere length was associated with the risk of Parkinson's disease (PD) in a case‐control study (96 cases and 172 age‐matched controls) nested within the Health Professionals Follow‐up Study. Relative ratio of telomere repeat copy number to single‐gene copy number in peripheral blood leukocytes was determined by quantitative real time PCR. Men with shorter telomeres had a lower PD risk (multivariate adjusted relative risk for the lowest vs. the highest quartile 0.33; 95% confidence interval: 0.12–0.90). Our results suggest that, contrary to telomere attrition observed in several aging‐related diseases, shorter telomeres are not associated with an increased risk of PD. © 2007 Movement Disorder Society |
| Keywords: | nested case‐control study Parkinson's disease telomere length relative risk |