More news just in on the health and longevity front. At the University of California San Francisco medical center, which I can see from my studio window but that’s about as close as I will ever come to claiming kinship, a clinical trial getting underway will investigate the telomere factor. You haven’t been worried about your telomeres? Get used to them. It hasn’t been so long since cholesterol and genomes became household words.
Bay Area women who volunteer for a clinical trial at UCSF will be among the first people in the world to learn the length of their telomeres – the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that regulate cell aging and may help people live longer, healthier lives.
Research has shown that the length of people’s telomeres is related to their “cellular age” – the health and stability of certain cells in their body. Because telomere length helps determine cellular health, it’s also been identified as a possible biomarker that can reveal information about a person’s overall health. Short telomeres have been linked to health problems like heart disease and diabetes.
UCSF researchers say it’s possible that identifying a person’s telomere length someday could become as common as checking cholesterol levels. A handful of private companies already have started advertising telomere testing to individuals. In fact, two of the researchers involved in the UCSF study are looking into starting their own company to test telomere length.
The study, reported by Erin Allday in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, will concern such issues as what relationship your telomeres’ length have to health and aging in general, and whether you even need to know a lot about the little cellular-ites. “The idea of telling people their telomere length is totally new and somewhat radical…,” said Elissa Epel, an associate professor of psychiatry at UCSF and one of the lead researchers in the telomere study. (On a purely personal, though relative note: you just try not to worry about it all when you are overage — they want women 50 to 65 — for an aging study and the lead researcher looks like she’s about as old as your granddaughter.)
Medical ethicists say the UCSF study makes sense – as more attention is drawn to telomere length as a potential marker of overall health, doctors should understand whether it benefits their patients to get that information or not.
If people can’t change their telomere length, there may be no point in telling them. Telomere length may be similar to some types of genetic testing that tell people whether they’re at increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease or certain types of cancer, said Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics.
Some individuals may decide they want that information – but it’s not always an easy decision to make, he said. “You might find out that you seem to be a premature or rapid ager, but whether there’s anything anybody can do to stop it or reverse it, that remains to be seen,” Caplan said.
How much our telomeres will tell us, what use we can make of it all, and whether you and I really want to know — these issues remain to be seen. Or at least, to be discovered in the coming study. I have absolute trust in the folks at UCSF. If you do too, and you fit the parameters (female living somewhere in this lovely part of California, between 50 and 65) and want to volunteer to be a part of it all, whip off an e-mail to knowyourtelomeres@ucsf.edu.
UCSF to look at new longevity, health marker.
