Leukocytes of exceptionally old persons display ultra-short telomeres

1 Center of Human Development and Aging, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, New Jersey Medical School, Newark, New Jersey; 2 Department of Geriatric Medicine and Metabolic Diseases, Second University of Naples, Naples, Italy; and 3 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, the Netherlands Submitted 24 August 2007 ; accepted in final form 20 September 2007 With a view to understanding the association between leukocyte telomere length and the human lifespan, we performed genome-wide telomere length analyses by the terminal restriction fragment length (TRFL) and single molecule telomere length analysis (STELA) of the X and Y chromosomes in leukocytes of exceptionally old (aged 90–104 yr) and younger (aged 23–74 yr) individuals. We found that the mean TRFL of 82 exceptionally old individuals was within a range projected by age-dependent TRFL attrition of 99 younger individuals. However, compared with the younger individuals, exceptionally old persons exhibited peaking of the TRFL distribution with overrepresentation of ultra-short telomeres. These findings were confirmed by the STELA. Women had longer mean TRFL than men (6.10 vs. 5.86 kb), and exceptionally old women exhibited fewer ultra-short telomeres than exceptionally old men. Our results have implications for gerontological studies of the limitation of lifespan in humans. aging; centenarians; mortality; replication; lifespan; senescence Address for reprint requests and other correspondence: M. Kimura, Center of Human Development and Aging, Room F-464, MSB, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, New Jersey Medical School, 185 South Orange Ave., Newark, New Jersey 07103 (e-mail: kimurama{at}umdnj.edu )