ArticleBrain and behavior2021
Telomere shortening in late-life depression: A potential marker of depression severity.
Article in Brain and behavior, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- Exploring the association between depression and telomere length: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Scientific reports · 2025Pooled it
- Trial
- Association of Molecular Senescence Markers in Late-Life Depression With Clinical Characteristics and Treatment Outcome.JAMA network open · 2022Trial
- Peripheral transcriptomic aging acceleration in major depressive disorder: the mediating role of insular cortex alterations.Psychological medicine · 2026Article
- Premature aging in serious mental illness.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Gender Differences and Comorbidities in Major Depression.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- Decreased Mitochondrial DNA Integrity and Elevated Inflammatory Markers in Late-Life Depression: A Longitudinal Study.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2025Article
- Epigenetic and Structural Brain Aging and Their Associations With Major Depressive Disorder.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2025Article
- Gene-environment-brain topology reveals clinical subtypes of depression in UK Biobank.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Association of Leucocyte Telomere Length With Stroke, Dementia, and Late-Life Depression: The Role of Modifiable Risk Factors.Neurology · 2025Article
- Immunopsychiatry of late life depression: role of ageing-related immune/inflammatory processes in the development and progression of depression.Acta neuropsychiatrica · 2025Review
- Elevated senescence-associated secretory phenotype index in late-life bipolar disorder.Journal of affective disorders · 2024Article
- Systemic inflammation, oxidative damage and neurocognition predict telomere length in a transdiagnostic sample stratified by global DNA methylation levels.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Geroscience-Centric Perspective for Geriatric Psychiatry: Integrating Aging Biology With Geriatric Mental Health Research.The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry · 2024Review
- Unraveling the association between major depressive disorder and senescent biomarkers in immune cells of older adults: a single-cell phenotypic analysis.Frontiers in aging · 2024Article
- Genes associated with cellular senescence as diagnostic markers of major depressive disorder and their correlations with immune infiltration.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Nicotinamide Riboside and Phycocyanin Oligopeptides Affect Stress Susceptibility in Chronic Corticosterone-Exposed Rats.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Maternal stress-induced changes in adolescent and adult offspring: Neurobehavioural improvement and telomere maintenance.Heliyon · 2023Article
- Major depression, physical health and molecular senescence markers abnormalities.Nature. Mental health · 2023Article
- Major depression and the biological hallmarks of aging.Ageing research reviews · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTelomeres are structures at the extremity of chromosomes that prevents genomic instability, and its shortening seems to be a hallmark of cellular aging. Past studies have shown contradictory results of telomere length (TL) in major depression, and are a few studies in late-life depression (LLD). This explores the association between TL as a molecular marker of aging and diagnosis of LLD, the severity of depressive symptoms, and cognitive performance in older adults. METHODS/
designWe included 78 older adults (45 with LLD and 33 nondepressed controls, according to DSM-V criteria), aged 60-90 years. TL was measured in leukocytes by a quantitative polymerase chain reaction, determining the relative ratio (T/S) between the telomere region copy number (T) and a single copy gene (S), using a relative standard curve.
resultsTL was significantly shorter in the LLD compared with control participants (p = .039). Comparing groups through the severity of depressive symptoms, we found a negative correlation with the severity of depressive symptoms (Hamilton Depression Rating Scale-21, r = -0.325, p = .004) and medical burden (r = -0.271, p = .038). There was no significant correlation between TL and cognitive performance (Mattis Dementia Rating Scale, r = 0.152, p = .21).
conclusionsWe found that older adults with LLD have shorter telomere than healthy controls, especially those with a more severe depressive episode. Our findings suggest that shorter TL can be a marker of the severity of depressive episodes in older adults and indicate that these individuals may be at higher risk of age-associated adverse outcomes linked to depression.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.