If current research is on the right track, a blood or saliva test to measure your telomeres might put you on the path to better health, by letting you know how fast your body is aging. Telomeres (pronounced TEEL-o-meres) are DNA sequences at the end of our chromosomes (they’re often likened to the tips of shoe laces that prevent unraveling). As cells replicate and age, telomeres shorten, which is not good for us. Short telomeres have been associated with higher risks of age-related diseases including heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and even early death, so being aware of their length might encourage people with short telomeres to take better care of their health to reduce risk.
A number of tests have been introduced or will soon become available to give us a heads up about telomere length. A Spanish company called Life Length sells a telomere test in Europe, and a US company, Telome Health of Menlo Park, California plans to offer a test later this year in the US. Telome was cofounded by Elizabeth Blackburn, who won a Nobel prize in 2009 for telomere discoveries. All these tests can tell us right now is whether our telomeres are long or short. Researchers haven’t figured out yet how long telomeres should be for a healthy person at any given age.
So what’s the point of being tested? Eli Puterman, Ph.D., a psychiatrist at the University of California San Francisco, is working on a study that includes 260 women ages 50 to 65 who agreed to telomere tests. The object of the study is to see how women react to learning that their telomeres are short and whether or not the knowledge will spur them to make lifestyle changes that might improve their health and lengthen their telomeres.
Dr. Puterman and his team are now analyzing their data and are about a year away from presenting their findings, but based on the reactions he’s heard so far, women in the study who learned that their telomeres were short indicated that they would make healthy changes such as getting more exercise, losing weight, giving up smoking or reducing stress.
“A few studies have shown that over a five-year period, in a good percent of people tested, telomeres stayed the same or got longer, but we need to know more from studies that include thousands of people that we can tap into every five years to see how telomere length changes,” says Dr. Puterman.
So should you be tested? Learning your telomere length could be a cool new way to confirm that you’re as healthy (or not) as you think. On the other hand, we already know what to do to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer and other age-related disorders. Do we really need to know how long our telomeres are to get started?
CONNECT THE DOTS
Here’s where you can learn more about telomere research. For more news about telomere testing, check out these articles in the New York Times and Nature. And here’s a report on how increasing an enzyme that protects telomeres reversed aging in mice.
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