Heart disease: chromosomes show the long and the short of it

0 Comments | AFP, January, 2007

PARIS (AFP) — Telomeres -- nubby strips of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes -- predict a man's risk of developing heart disease, according to a new study. Telomeres get shorter each time a cell divides. Shorter telomeres indicate older cells and are thus a marker of biological ageing, which varies according to the individual.

British doctors measured the length of telomeres in the chromosomes of white blood cells among men aged 45-64 who had enrolled in a big study on coronary prevention in western Scotland, published in Saturday's issues of The Lancet. The 484 men who went on to develop coronary heart disease had shorter telomeres than the 1,058 men who remained disease-free, the investigators discovered. The same Scottish study also randomly assigned some volunteers to...