Telomeres are shorter and associated with number of suicide attempts in affective disorders

Birkenæs, Viktoria; Elvsåshagen, Torbjørn; Høegh, Margrethe Collier; Haram, Marit; Werner, Maren Caroline Frogner; Quintana, Daniel; Lunding, Synve Hoffart; Martin‐Ruiz, Carmen; Agartz, Ingrid; Djurovic, Srdjan; Steen, Nils Eiel; Andreassen, Ole A.; Aas, Monica

doi:10.1016/j.jad.2021.08.135

Cited by 15 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…As for TL, we did not find an association with any of the mental health and well-being outcomes. Previous studies in adults showed a lower TL in association with current but not remitted anxiety disorder [ 81 ], depressive [ 82 ] and major depressive disorder [ 73 , 83 ], childhood trauma [ 84 ] suicide [ 77 , 85 ], depressive symptoms in younger adults [ 86 ] and acculturative stress and postpartum depression in Latinx women [ 87 ]. Also, in a meta-analysis, psychiatric disorders overall were associated with a shorter leucocyte TL [ 88 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A healthy lifestyle is positively associated with mental health and well-being and core markers in ageing

Hautekiet

Saenen

Martens

et al. 2022

BMC Med

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Background Studies often evaluate mental health and well-being in association with individual health behaviours although evaluating multiple health behaviours that co-occur in real life may reveal important insights into the overall association. Also, the underlying pathways of how lifestyle might affect our health are still under debate. Here, we studied the mediation of different health behaviours or lifestyle factors on mental health and its effect on core markers of ageing: telomere length (TL) and mitochondrial DNA content (mtDNAc). Methods In this study, 6054 adults from the 2018 Belgian Health Interview Survey (BHIS) were included. Mental health and well-being outcomes included psychological and severe psychological distress, vitality, life satisfaction, self-perceived health, depressive and generalised anxiety disorder and suicidal ideation. A lifestyle score integrating diet, physical activity, smoking status, alcohol consumption and BMI was created and validated. On a subset of 739 participants, leucocyte TL and mtDNAc were assessed using qPCR. Generalised linear mixed models were used while adjusting for a priori chosen covariates. Results The average age (SD) of the study population was 49.9 (17.5) years, and 48.8% were men. A one-point increment in the lifestyle score was associated with lower odds (ranging from 0.56 to 0.74) for all studied mental health outcomes and with a 1.74% (95% CI: 0.11, 3.40%) longer TL and 4.07% (95% CI: 2.01, 6.17%) higher mtDNAc. Psychological distress and suicidal ideation were associated with a lower mtDNAc of − 4.62% (95% CI: − 8.85, − 0.20%) and − 7.83% (95% CI: − 14.77, − 0.34%), respectively. No associations were found between mental health and TL. Conclusions In this large-scale study, we showed the positive association between a healthy lifestyle and both biological ageing and different dimensions of mental health and well-being. We also indicated that living a healthy lifestyle contributes to more favourable biological ageing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A healthy lifestyle is positively associated with mental health and well-being and core markers in ageing

Hautekiet

Saenen

Martens

et al. 2022

BMC Med

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“…However, several trends may be noted: (i) although they had the same age, Group 2 seemed to have the highest densities of mood episodes (whatever the polarity being considered) than Group 3; (ii) individuals in Group 3 also tend to be more on lithium than Group 2 who seemed to be more on anticonvulsants which is consistent with the literature where individuals with BD taking lithium appear to have a longer telomere length than others. Some other variables that may be associated with cellular aging, such as suicide attempts [ 40 ] and substance use disorders [ 41 ] (current tobacco or past alcohol misuse for example) have been analysed in this study, but no significant differences were observed between subgroups. If replicated in larger and independent samples, the existence of such a subgroup would deserve further characterization to better identify which young individuals with BD might be more at risk for accelerated cellular aging.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Telomere length and mitochondrial DNA copy number in bipolar disorder: identification of a subgroup of young individuals with accelerated cellular aging

et al. 2022

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The 10–15-years decrease in life expectancy observed in individuals with bipolar disorder (BD) has been linked to the concept of accelerated cellular aging. Telomere length (TL) and mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNAcn) have been proposed as markers of cellular aging and comparisons between individuals with BD and healthy controls (HC) sometimes led to conflicting results. Previous studies had moderate sample sizes and studies combining these two markers into a single analysis are scarce. Using quantitative polymerase chain reaction, we measured both TL and mtDNAcn in DNA (peripheral blood) in a sample of 130 individuals with BD and 78 HC. Regression analyses, receiver operating characteristic (ROC), and clustering analyses were performed. We observed significantly lower TL and mtDNAcn in individuals with BD as compared to HC (respective decrease of 26.5 and 35.8%). ROC analyses showed that TL and mtDNAcn highly discriminated groups (AUC = 0.904 for TL and AUC = 0.931 for mtDNAcn). In the whole population, clustering analyses identified a group of young individuals (age around 36 years), with accelerated cellular aging (both shorter TL and lower mtDNAcn), which consisted mostly of individuals with BD (85.5%). The subgroup of patients with young age but accelerated aging was not characterized by specific clinical variables related to the course of BD or childhood maltreatment. However, patients in this subgroup were more frequently treated with anticonvulsants. Further characterization of this subgroup is required to better understand the molecular mechanisms and the risk factors of accelerated cellular aging in BD.

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“…Emerging studies implicate premature cellular senescence to contribute to reductions in life-expectancies, which are observed in mental disorders [ 7 ]. Specifically, telomere length—a putative biomarker of accelerated aging and mortality—has been recently demonstrated to be shorter in suicide attempters with affective disorders [ 8 ]. Yet, suicide attempt is a highly heterogenous phenotype and prospective clinical and epidemiological studies demonstrate that high intent to die and a choice of a violent method, especially hanging, predict a higher risk of committed suicide [ 9 , 10 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accelerated epigenetic aging in suicide attempters uninfluenced by high intent-to-die and choice of lethal methods

et al. 2022

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Suicide attempts (SA) are associated with excess non-suicidal mortality, putatively mediated in part by premature cellular senescence. Epigenetic age (EA) estimators of biological age have been previously demonstrated to strongly predict physiological dysregulation and mortality risk. Herein, we investigate if violent SA with high intent-to-die is predictive of epigenetics-derived estimates of biological aging. The genome-wide methylation pattern was measured using the Illumina Infinium Methylation EPIC BeadChip in whole blood of 88 suicide attempters. Subjects were stratified into two groups based on the putative risk of later committed suicide (low- [n = 58] and high-risk [n = 30]) in dependency of SA method (violent or non-violent) and/or intent-to-die (high/low). Estimators of intrinsic and extrinsic EA acceleration, one marker optimized to predict physiological dysregulation (DNAmPhenoAge/AgeAccelPheno) and one optimized to predict lifespan (DNAmGrimAge/AgeAccelGrim) were investigated for associations to severity of SA, by univariate and multivariate analyses. The study was adequately powered to detect differences of 2.2 years in AgeAccelGrim in relation to SA severity. Baseline DNAmGrimAge exceeded chronological age by 7.3 years on average across all samples, conferring a mean 24.6% increase in relation to actual age. No individual EA acceleration marker was differentiated by suicidal risk group (p > 0.1). Thus, SA per se but not severity of SA is related to EA, implicating that excess non-suicidal mortality in SA is unrelated to risk of committed suicide. Preventative healthcare efforts aimed at curtailing excess mortality after SA may benefit from acting equally powerful to recognize somatic comorbidities irrespective of the severity inherent in the act itself.

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Telomeres are shorter and associated with number of suicide attempts in affective disorders

Cited by 15 publications

References 81 publications

A healthy lifestyle is positively associated with mental health and well-being and core markers in ageing

A healthy lifestyle is positively associated with mental health and well-being and core markers in ageing

Telomere length and mitochondrial DNA copy number in bipolar disorder: identification of a subgroup of young individuals with accelerated cellular aging

Accelerated epigenetic aging in suicide attempters uninfluenced by high intent-to-die and choice of lethal methods

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