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Persistent herpes virus infections associated with telomere length
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Cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex virus 1 and human herpes virus 6 all associated with telomere shortening, according to findings recently published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.
“The length of telomeres, the DNA-protein structures that cap and stabilize the physical ends of chromosomes, has been proposed as a marker of cellular aging,” Jennifer B. Dowd, PhD, of the department of global health and social medicine at King’s College London, and colleagues wrote. “In most cells these telomeres shorten with each round of cell division, with critically short telomeres leading to cellular senescence and genomic instability.”
Shortening of telomeres with age is established, the researchers wrote. However, age appears to account for only 10% of variation in leukocyte telomere length, even in patients of the same age.
“Additional exposures underling interindividual variation in [leukocyte telomere length] are not well characterized but may include infection history, particularly chronic viral infections,” they wrote.
The researchers examined participants from the Heart Scan subsample of the Whitehall II epidemiological cohort, a study that investigated risk factors for coronary heart disease. Dowd and colleagues evaluated associations of human herpes viruses – herpes simplex 1, herpes virus 6, cytomegalovirus and Epstein-Barr virus – with changes in leukocyte telomere length over the course of 3 years in 400 healthy adults. All patients were of white European descent and were aged 53 to 76 years at baseline.
Herpes virus 6, herpes simplex and cytomegalovirus were all independently associated with increased 3-year attrition of leukocyte telomere length, Dowd and colleagues reported, Epstein-Barr virus showed no association. The researchers reported that the associations were large, noting that seropositivity for cytomegalovirus was associated with changes in telomere length that were equivalent to 12 years of chronological aging. Seropositivity to multiple herpes viruses showed an additive association with greater leukocyte telomere length attrition (herpes viruses, = -0.07; P = .02; n = infections vs. = -0.14; P < .001). Dowd and colleagues wrote that these associations remained “robust” even after they adjusted for sex, age, employment grade, smoking status and body mass index.
“The challenge now is for investigators to determine whether the various reported associations with herpes viruses are causal and whether their effects can be ameliorated through the repurposing of existing medical interventions,” Paul D. Griffiths, MD, DSc, FRCPath, of the Centre for Virology at UCL Medical School, London, wrote in an accompanying editorial. “The prize is none other than the potential slowing down of the aging process that has been taken to part of normal life, but might be reclassified as having a pathologic component driven by silent herpes virus infections.” – by Andy Polhamus
Disclosure: Griffiths reports no relevant financial disclosures. Dowd reports no relevant financial disclosures. Please see the full study for a complete list of all other researchers’ relevant financial disclosures.
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