Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comparative Study
. 2014;63(Suppl 3):S343-50.
doi: 10.33549/physiolres.932856.

Comparison of the relative telomere length measured in leukocytes and eleven different human tissues

D Dlouha  1 , J Maluskova, I Kralova Lesna, V Lanska, J A Hubacek
Affiliations
Free article
Comparative Study

Comparison of the relative telomere length measured in leukocytes and eleven different human tissues

D Dlouha et al. Physiol Res. 2014.
Free article

Abstract

The relative length of telomeres measured in peripheral blood leukocytes is a commonly used system marker for biological aging and can also be used as a biomarker of cardiovascular aging. However, to what extent the telomere length in peripheral leukocytes reflects telomere length in different organ tissues is still unclear. Therefore, we have measured relative telomere length (rTL) in twelve different human tissues (peripheral blood leukocytes, liver, kidney, heart, spleen, brain, skin, triceps, tongue mucosa, intercostal skeletal muscle, subcutaneous fat, and abdominal fat) from twelve cadavers (age range of 29 week of gestation to 88 years old). The highest rTL variability was observed in peripheral leukocytes, and the lowest variability was found in brain. We found a significant linear correlation between leukocyte rTL and both intercostal muscle (R=0.68, P<0.02) and liver rTL (R=0.60, P<0.05) only. High rTL variability was observed between different organs from one individual. Furthermore, we have shown that even slight DNA degradation (modeled by sonication of genomic DNA) leads to false rTL shortening. We conclude that the rTL in peripheral leukocytes is not strongly correlated with the rTL in different organs.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

MeSH terms