Vol. 37 (2) 2016 Neuro endocrinology letters

Comparison of relative telomere length measured in aortic tissue and leukocytes in patients with end stage heart failure.

OBJECTIVES: Telomeres are repetitive non-coding DNA sequences on the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes. Relative leukocyte telomere length (LrTL) is considered to reflect biological ageing and fitness. Therefore, we examined whether LrTL would reflect rTL in aortic tissue (ArTL) and whether it could be used as a marker of biological heart .....