Short telomeres increase the risk of severe COVID-19.
Telomeres are non-coding DNA sequences that protect chromosome ends and shorten with age. Short telomere length (TL) is associated with chronic diseases and immunosenescence. The main risk factor for mortality of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is older age, but outcome is very heterogeneous among individuals of the same age group. Therefore, we hypothesized that TL influences COVID-19-related outcomes. In a prospective study, we measured TL by Flow-FISH in 70 hospitalized COVID-19 patients and compared TL distribution with our reference cohort of 491 healthy volunteers. We also correlated TL with baseline clinical and biological parameters. We stained autopsy lung tissue from six non-survivor COVID-19 patients to detect senescence-associated β-galactosidase activity, a marker of cellular aging. We found a significantly higher proportion of patients with short telomeres (<10th percentile) in the COVID-19 patients as compared to the reference cohort (P<0.001). Short telomeres were associated with a higher risk of critical disease, defined as admission to intensive care unit (ICU) or death without ICU. TL was negatively correlated with C-reactive protein and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio. Finally, lung tissue from patients with very short telomeres exhibit signs of senescence in structural and immune cells. Our results suggest that TL influences the severity of the disease.
['Froidure|Antoine|A|', 'Mahieu|Manon|M|', 'Hoton|Delphine|D|', 'Laterre|Pierre-François|PF|', 'Yombi|Jean Cyr|JC|', 'Koenig|Sandra|S|', 'Ghaye|Benoit|B|', 'Defour|Jean-Philippe|JP|', 'Decottignies|Anabelle|A|']
D000328:Adult D000368:Aged D000369:Aged, 80 and over D000086382:COVID-19 D016922:Cellular Senescence D018352:Coronavirus Infections D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008168:Lung D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D058873:Pandemics D011024:Pneumonia, Viral D011446:Prospective Studies D016615:Telomere D059505:Telomere Homeostasis
COVID-19 telomere length