Correlation of telomere length in brain tissue with peripheral tissues in living human subjects

Annemarie J Carver; Benjamin Hing; Benjamin A Elser; Stephanie J Lussier; Takehiko Yamanashi; Matthew A Howard 3rd; Hiroto Kawasaki; Gen Shinozaki; Hanna E Stevens

doi:10.3389/fnmol.2024.1303974

Correlation of telomere length in brain tissue with peripheral tissues in living human subjects

Front Mol Neurosci. 2024 Mar 7:17:1303974. doi: 10.3389/fnmol.2024.1303974. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Annemarie J Carver^#^{1

2

3}, Benjamin Hing^#^{1

2}, Benjamin A Elser^{1

2

4}, Stephanie J Lussier^{1

2

5}, Takehiko Yamanashi^{1

2

6

7}, Matthew A Howard 3rd^{2

8}, Hiroto Kawasaki^{2

8}, Gen Shinozaki^{1

2

6}, Hanna E Stevens^{1

2

3

4

9}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States.
² Iowa Neuroscience Institute, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States.
³ Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Genetics, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States.
⁴ Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Human Toxicology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States.
⁵ Biostatistics Graduate Program, College of Public Health, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States.
⁶ Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Standford University, Stanford, CA, United States.
⁷ Division of Neuropsychiatry, Tottori University, Tottori, Japan.
⁸ Department of Neurosurgery, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States.
⁹ Hawk-Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Telomeres are important to chromosomal stability, and changes in their length correlate with disease, potentially relevant to brain disorders. Assessing telomere length in human brain is invasive, but whether peripheral tissue telomere length correlates with that in brain is not known. Saliva, buccal, blood, and brain samples were collected at time points before, during, and after subjects undergoing neurosurgery (n = 35) for intractable epilepsy. DNA was isolated from samples and average telomere length assessed by qPCR. Correlations of telomere length between tissue samples were calculated across subjects. When data were stratified by sex, saliva telomere length correlated with brain telomere length in males only. Buccal telomere length correlated with brain telomere length when males and females were combined. These findings indicate that in living subjects, telomere length in peripheral tissues variably correlates with that in brain and may be dependent on sex. Peripheral tissue telomere length may provide insight into brain telomere length, relevant to assessment of brain disorder pathophysiology.

Keywords: blood; brain; buccal tissue; neurology; neuropsychiatric disorders; neuroscience; saliva; telomere.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by research grants from the National Institutes of Mental Health, United States (R01 MH119165), Genetics Training Grants (NIH T32GM008629 and NIH T32GM145441), Ida P. Haller Chair in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust.