Telomere shortening in neurological disorders: an abundance of unanswered questions
Open accessAbstract
Telomeres, ribonucleoprotein complexes that cap eukaryotic chromosomes, typically shorten in leukocytes with aging. Aging is a primary risk factor for neurodegenerative disease (ND), and a common assumption has arisen that leukocyte telomere length (LTL) can serve as a predictor of neurological disease. However, the evidence for shorter LTL in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients is inconsistent. The diverse causes of telomere shortening may explain variability in LTL between studies and individuals. Additional research is needed to determine whether neuronal and glial telomeres shorten during aging and in neurodegenerative disorders, if and how LTL is related to brain cell telomere shortening, and whether telomere shortening plays a causal role in or exacerbates neurological disorders.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
An association between telomere shortening and AD has been suggested.
“Finally, an association between telomere shortening and AD has been suggested [246,247,248].”
From Ageing, Cellular Senescence and Neurodegenerative Disease (2018) · cites this paper as [246]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 104 · Cited by 158
Research works printed but not linked: 6
- [10]Tzanetakou IP 2012 “Is obesity linked to aging?”: adipose tissue and the role of telomeres Ageing Res Rev 11 220 229 22186032
- [23]Morocz M 2002 Elevated levels of oxidative DNA damage in lymphocytes from patients with Alzheimer’s disease Neurobiol Aging 23 47 53 11755018
- [51]Yaffe K 2011 Telomere length and cognitive function in community-dwelling elders: findings from the Health ABC Study Neurobiol Aging 32 2055 2060 20031273 PMC2916948
- [52]Valdes AM 2010 Leukocyte telomere length is associated with cognitive performance in healthy women Neurobiol Aging 31 986 992 18718693 PMC2876308
- [54]Zekry D 2010 Telomere length is not predictive of dementia or MCI conversion in the oldest old Neurobiol Aging 31 719 720 18599157
- [96]Jenkins EC 2010 Shorter telomeres may indicate dementia status in older individuals with Down syndrome Neurobiol Aging 31 765 771 18635289 PMC2842474
- Authors
- Eitan, E., Hutchison, E. R., & Mattson, M. P.
- Affiliations
- National Institute on Aging (US)
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Mattson, Mark P.
- Venue
- Trends in Neurosciences
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2014-05
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 256-263
- ISSN
- 0166-2236 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4008659
- OpenAlex
- W2066752981
- Cited by
- 158
- References
- 104
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 15 · 2014: 4
- FWCI
- 1.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Trends in Neurosciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute on Aging (ZIAAG000313, ZIAAG000314, ZIAAG000331)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Telomeres, Telomerase, and Senescence
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Aging › Genetics, Aging, and Longevity in Model Organisms
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
- Keywords
- telomere shortening, leukocyte telomere length, neurodegenerative diseases, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, aging, aging as risk factor
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Humans, Nervous System Diseases, Telomere Shortening
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
