Investigation of telomere length in young age ischemic stroke patients

Abstract

Background & Objective: Telomere length is frequently accepted as a marker of biological aging. Various studies examine the relationship between telomere length, accepted as a marker of biological aging, and stroke, but this relationship has not been clearly demonstrated. The objective of this study is to determine whether short DNA telomere length is an independent risk factor for stroke. Methods: Our study examined telomere length in young patients with ischemic stroke. The study included 60 patients with a history of ischemic stroke at a young age within the last 3 years and a control group consisting of 40 volunteers with similar age, gender, and disease history defined as risk factors for stroke. Results: In our study, the mean telomere length of the patient group was significantly higher than the mean telomere length of the control group. However, the telomere length of the patients in the study did not show a significant difference between socio-demographic and risk factors defined for ischemic stroke. Conclusion: Our study is very important in being the first to show such a relationship between telomere length and young age ischemic stroke. The low sample size may partially explain this result compared to other studies, as well as the study’s design, the study population’s age, ethnicity, and methods of studying telomere length. More studies with a larger sample size with younger patients are needed to better understand the relationship between telomere length and stroke in the future.