From Tom Vulliamy
You report a study which found that telomere length increased in a group of 10 men with prostate cancer, who followed a healthy-living regime including a meat-free diet, exercise and yoga (21 September, p 14). But it is important to highlight the limits of these results. It was a small pilot study and the significance of the effect of these lifestyle changes on telomere length is actually quite borderline: only two or three men showed clear improvement over what can be seen in the control group.
I’m going to wait to see whether this can be replicated on a larger scale and with more sizeable effects before I get excited.
London, UK
Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biology, Queen Mary, University of London
