THE gradual erosion of telomeres, the DNA caps at the ends of chromosomes, may signal an increased risk of heart disease.
In a study of about 1500 men, those with shorter telomeres in their white blood cells turned out to be more susceptible to heart attacks than those with longer telomeres.
The cholesterol-busting drugs called statins seemed to weaken the link, but only in people with comparatively short telomeres. “Without statins they might have been even shorter,” says Nilesh Samani of the University of Leicester, UK, who led the research (The Lancet, vol 369, p 107).
The link could…
