ArticleBiology letters2019
Telomere shortening as a mechanism of long-term cost of infectious diseases in natural animal populations.
Article in Biology letters, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Ageing in Honeybees: Telomere Length Is Driven by Climate and Resource Availability Rather Than Urbanisation or Pollution.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Co-Exposure with the Herbicide 2,4-D Does Not ExacerbateAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Immune response accelerated telomere shortening during early life stage of a passerine bird, the blue tit (Biology letters · 2025Article
- Review
- Reproductive aging weakens offspring survival and constrains the telomerase response to herpesvirus in Pacific oysters.Science advances · 2024Article
- The Impact of HIV and Parasite Single Infection and Coinfection on Telomere Length: A Systematic Review.Current issues in molecular biology · 2024Review
- No correlative evidence of costs of infection or immunity on leucocyte telomere length in a wild population of Soay sheep.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Why and when should organisms elongate their telomeres? Elaborations on the 'excess resources elongation' and 'last resort elongation' hypotheses.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Causes and consequences of variation in early-life telomere length in a bird metapopulation.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Telomere length declines with age, but relates to immune function independent of age in a wild passerine.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Gut microbiome and telomere length in gull hatchlings.Biology letters · 2021Article
- Natural variation in plant telomere length is associated with flowering time.The Plant cell · 2021Article
- Pathogen burden and leukocyte telomere length in the United States.Immunity & ageing : I & A · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Pathogens are potent selective forces that can reduce the fitness of their hosts. While studies of the short-term energetic costs of infections are accumulating, the long-term costs have only just started to be investigated. Such delayed costs may, at least in part, be mediated by telomere erosion. This hypothesis is supported by experimental investigations conducted on laboratory animals which show that infection accelerates telomere erosion in immune cells. However, the generalizability of such findings to natural animal populations and to humans remains debatable. First, laboratory animals typically display long telomeres relative to their wild counterparts. Second, unlike humans and most wild animals, laboratory small-bodied mammals are capable of telomerase-based telomere maintenance throughout life. Third, the effect of infections on telomere shortening and ageing has only been studied using single pathogen infections, yet hosts are often simultaneously confronted with a range of pathogens in the wild. Thus, the cost of an infection in terms of telomere-shortening-related ageing in natural animal populations is likely to be strongly underestimated. Here, we discuss how investigations into the links between infection, immune response and tissue ageing are now required to improve our understanding of the long-term impact of disease.
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Registered trials
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