View clinical trials related to Telomere Length, Mean Leukocyte.
Filter by:Stressful and traumatic experiences in childhood (Adverse Childhood Events, or ACEs) have been associated with poor health outcomes that extend into adulthood. When stress is sustained or severe in the absence of an adequate buffer, the stress response can become dysregulated--a state referred to as toxic stress. Some professional organizations have advocated for ACEs screening to be part of routine medical care. To date, however, no ACEs screening tool has been validated for use with children. Intervening early at critical points in the life course has the potential to allow a child to avoid the negative consequences of these adverse events. The proposed study has three overarching aims: (1) Examine the relationship between ACEs, stress biomarkers, and symptoms in children and caregivers over time; (2) Validate an ACEs screening in a pediatric health care setting; and (3) Test whether providing primary care-based preventive interventions for children with or at risk for toxic stress can lead to detectable changes in biomarkers, behavior, or health outcomes for children and/or caregivers.
There is now a critical mass of data linking health to telomere length, and blood telomere length is starting to become a commercially available measure, with several companies either offering or planning to offer this measure. With the growing intrigue and interest in telomeres and its commercial measurement, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the psychological and behavioral impact of receiving information about one's own telomere length. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study is to provide results of blood telomere length (from immune cells) to individuals, and to examine the subsequent psychological and lifestyle factors associated with learning one's personal results. Specifically, the investigators will assess if providing both telomere length and educational material on how cell aging is related to health and how it is modifiable, might lead to improvements in salutary health behaviors, and consequently, changes in telomere length. A secondary goal of the study is methodological in nature. Human studies have mainly been limited to immune cells from blood, which requires a blood draw. The relation between blood telomere length and telomere length from other cells that are more easily accessible has not been assessed. Therefore, this study will assess relations between blood telomere length from venous blood draw with telomere lengths from buccal cells, hair follicle cells, and blood cells from a finger prick. This study will assess whether a new measure of telomere damage (TIFS) is related to other measures of cell aging. This study will also assess the reliability of the venous blood draw telomere length across three different assays (PCR, southern blot, and fluorescent in situ hybridization or FISH). To meet these aims, this study will collect samples of these cells from 240 healthy volunteers from the community.
In our study, we used data from 4,758 healthy adults from the 1999-2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys to examine the associations between evidence-based diet quality indices and leukocyte telomere length. Our study assessed the four most widely recognized and commonly used diet quality indices in nutritional epidemiology: the USDA-developed Healthy Eating Index-2010, the Alternate Healthy Eating Index-2010, the Mediterranean Diet Score, and the DASH diet score. Analyses were adjusted for sociodemographic and health variables known to influence dietary intake and cellular aging.