ArticleScientific reports2021
Telomere length and outcome of treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis in a gold mining community.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 6 citations in OpenAlex.
- Unsuppressed Viremia and Lower CD4 Count Associated With Faster Telomere Attrition in African Children With Perinatal Human Immunodeficiency Virus on Long-term Antiretroviral Therapy.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2026Trial
- Molecular Interplay of Brucellosis and Tuberculosis: Insights into Telomere Biology, Oxidative Stress, and Drug Resistance Mechanisms.Diseases (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Elimination of senescent cells with senolytic drugs as adjunctive host-directed therapy reduces tuberculosis progression in mice.Nature communications · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Telomere length (TL) is a marker of ageing and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is an early marker of inflammation caused by oxidative stress. We determined TL and mtDNA content among active pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) patients to assess if these cellular biomarkers differed between artisanal miners and non-miners, and to assess if they were predictive of treatment outcome. We conducted a prospective cohort study from August 2018 to May 2019 involving newly diagnosed PTB patients at three outpatient TB clinics in a rural Democratic Republic of Congo. We measured relative TL and mtDNA content in peripheral blood leukocytes (at inclusion) via qPCR and assessed their association with PTB treatment outcome. We included 129 patients (85 miners and 44 non-miners) with PTB (median age 40 years; range 5-71 years, 22% HIV-coinfected). For each increase in year and HIV-coinfection, TL shortened by - 0.85% (- 0.19 to - 0.52) (p ≤ 0.0001) and - 14% (- 28.22 to - 1.79) (p = 0.02) respectively. Independent of these covariates, patients with longer TL were more likely to have successful TB treatment [adjusted hazard ratio; 95% CI 1.27 for a doubling of leucocyte telomere length at baseline; 1.05-1.44] than patients with a shorter TL. Blood mtDNA content was not predictive for PTB outcome. For a given chronological age, PTB patients with longer telomeres at time of diagnosis were more likely to have successful PTB treatment outcome.
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