A study of nearly 500,000 people has shown that smoking shortens the end fragments of chromosomes in the white blood cells of our immune systems.
Reviewed by Danielle Ellis, B.Sc.Sep 12 2023 The length of these end fragments, called telomeres, is an indicator of how quickly we age and our cells' ability to repair and regenerate.
Telomeres are like the plastic or metal sheathes at the end of shoelaces, which prevent the shoelaces from fraying. They are lengths of repetitive DNA sequences that protect the ends of chromosomes. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres become slightly shorter, eventually becoming so short that the cell can no longer divide successfully, and it dies. This is part of the aging process.
They used a method called Mendelian randomization, which uses the variations in genes that are inherited from our parents, to infer how exposure to a modifiable environmental factor is causally related to a disease or health condition . Mendelian randomization avoids the problem of other, often unknown factors affecting the results, thereby enabling researchers to investigate whether a particular factor is the cause of a condition, rather than just being associated with it.
We found that current smoking status was statistically significantly associated with shorter leucocyte telomere length, whereas previous smokers and people who had never smoked didn't show significantly shorter leucocyte telomere length. Among people who used to smoke, there was a trend towards shorter telomere length, but this was not statistically significant. People who smoked the greater number of cigarettes had significantly shorter leucocyte telomere length.
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