ArticleRespiratory research2018
The aging lung: tissue telomere shortening in health and disease.
Article in Respiratory research, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 57 citations in OpenAlex.
- Gene expression meta-analysis reveals aging and cellular senescence signatures in scleroderma-associated interstitial lung disease.Frontiers in immunology · 2024Pooled it
- Fueling the fire: metabolic dysfunction and senescence as drivers of lung aging and disease.Physiological reviews · 2026Review
- Telomere Dysfunction and Proteostasis Decline Define Distinct Pathways of Cellular Senescence in the Human Respiratory Tract.Aging cell · 2026Article
- Telomere biology disorders in lung transplantation: Clinical challenges and management strategies.JHLT open · 2025Review
- Development and external validation of a model for lung transplantation-free survival prediction of primary Sjögren syndrome-associated interstitial lung disease: a prospective cohort study.ERJ open research · 2025Article
- Beyond the Graft: Recurrence of Interstitial Lung Diseases Post Transplant.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Review
- Leukocyte telomere length and attrition in association with disease severity in cystic fibrosis patients.Aging · 2024Article
- Casual effects of telomere length on sarcoidosis: a bidirectional Mendelian randomization analysis.Frontiers in medicine · 2024Article
- Short airway telomeres are associated with primary graft dysfunction and chronic lung allograft dysfunction.The Journal of heart and lung transplantation : the official publication of the International Society for Heart Transplantation · 2023Article
- A genomic perspective of the aging human and mouse lung with a focus on immune response and cellular senescence.Immunity & ageing : I & A · 2023Article
- A titratable murine model of progressive emphysema using tracheal porcine pancreatic elastase.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Consequences of telomere dysfunction in fibroblasts, club and basal cells for lung fibrosis development.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Remodeling of the Aged and Emphysematous Lungs: Roles of Microenvironmental Cues.Comprehensive Physiology · 2022Article
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- Article
- Lung Microenvironments and Disease Progression in Fibrotic Hypersensitivity Pneumonitis.American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine · 2022Article
- Volumetric Imaging of Lung Tissue at Micrometer Resolution: Clinical Applications of Micro-CT for the Diagnosis of Pulmonary Diseases.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Th17/IL-17 induces endothelial cell senescence via activation of NF-κB/p53/Rb signaling pathway.Laboratory investigation; a journal of technical methods and pathology · 2021Article
- Review
- Telomere shortening and DNA damage in culprit cells of different types of progressive fibrosing interstitial lung disease.ERJ open research · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
20 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundTelomere shortening has been associated with several lung diseases. However, telomere length is generally measured in peripheral blood leucocytes rather than in lung tissue, where disease occurs. Consequently, telomere dynamics have not been established for the normal human lung nor for diseased lung tissue. We hypothesized an age- and disease-dependent shortening of lung tissue telomeres.
methodsAt time of (re-)transplantation or autopsy, 70 explant lungs were collected: from unused donors (normal, n = 13) and patients with cystic fibrosis (CF, n = 12), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD, n = 11), chronic hypersensitivity pneumonitis (cHP, n = 9), bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS) after prior transplantation (n = 11) and restrictive allograft syndrome (RAS) after prior transplantation (n = 14). Lungs were inflated, frozen and then scanned using CT. Four tissue cores from distinct lung regions were sampled for analysis. Disease severity was evaluated using CT and micro CT imaging. DNA was extracted from the samples and average relative telomere length (RTL) was determined using real-time qPCR.
resultsThe normal lungs showed a decrease in RTL with age (p < 0.0001). Of the diseased lungs, only BOS and RAS showed significant RTL decrease with increasing lung age (p = 0.0220 and p = 0.0272 respectively). Furthermore, we found that RTL showed considerable variability between samples within both normal and diseased lungs. cHP, BOS and RAS lungs had significant shorter RTL in comparison with normal lungs, after adjustment for lung age, sex and BMI (p < 0.0001, p = 0.0051 and p = 0.0301 respectively). When investigating the relation between RTL and regional disease severity in CF, cHP and RAS, no association was found.
conclusionThese results show a progressive decline in telomere length with age in normal, BOS and RAS lungs. cHP, BOS and RAS lungs demonstrated shorter RTL compared to normal lungs. Lung tissue RTL does not associate with regional disease severity within the lung. Therefore, tissue RTL does not seem to fully reflect peripheral blood telomere length.
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