Short telomeres increase the risk of severe COVID-19.
Aging (Albany NY)
; 12(20): 19911-19922, 2020 10 26.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-892549
ABSTRACT
Telomeres are non-coding DNA sequences that protect chromosome ends and shorten with age. Short telomere length (TL) is associated with chronic diseases and immunosenescence. The main risk factor for mortality of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is older age, but outcome is very heterogeneous among individuals of the same age group. Therefore, we hypothesized that TL influences COVID-19-related outcomes. In a prospective study, we measured TL by Flow-FISH in 70 hospitalized COVID-19 patients and compared TL distribution with our reference cohort of 491 healthy volunteers. We also correlated TL with baseline clinical and biological parameters. We stained autopsy lung tissue from six non-survivor COVID-19 patients to detect senescence-associated ß-galactosidase activity, a marker of cellular aging. We found a significantly higher proportion of patients with short telomeres (<10th percentile) in the COVID-19 patients as compared to the reference cohort (P<0.001). Short telomeres were associated with a higher risk of critical disease, defined as admission to intensive care unit (ICU) or death without ICU. TL was negatively correlated with C-reactive protein and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio. Finally, lung tissue from patients with very short telomeres exhibit signs of senescence in structural and immune cells. Our results suggest that TL influences the severity of the disease.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Pneumonia, Viral
/
Telomere
/
Coronavirus Infections
/
Pandemics
/
Telomere Homeostasis
Type of study:
Cohort study
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Adult
/
Aged
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Middle aged
Language:
English
Journal:
Aging (Albany NY)
Journal subject:
Geriatrics
Year:
2020
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Aging.104097
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