People who fall ill with a range of diseases may be victims of accelerated biological ageing, researchers said last night.
Scientists have found a direct link between human ageing chromosomes, known as telomeres, and diseases such as heart disease, multiple sclerosis, some cancers and the wheat-resistant disease coeliac disease.
The researchers say this may explain why some people become more susceptible to illness than others.
Telomere length has been thought to help explain human longevity, acting like a biological clock. The chromosomes lose length each time a cell divides – and different people are born with telomeres of different lengths.
Writing in Nature Genetics, researchers identify seven genetic variants linked to telomere length and show they are also linked to several disease.
Researcher Professor Nilesh Samani, of Leicester University, said: “These are really exciting findings. This research strongly suggests that biological ageing plays an important role in causing coronary artery disease, the commonest cause of death in the world.
"This provides a novel way of looking at the disease and at least partly explains why some patients develop it early and others don’t develop it at all even if they carry other risk factors.”
Fellow researcher Stig Bojesen, of Copenhagen University, Denmark, said: "The mapping of telomerase may, among other things, boost our knowledge of cancers and their treatment, and with the new findings the genetic correlation between cancer and telomere length has been thoroughly illustrated for the first time."
Nature Genetics 27 March 2013
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