The approximate formulas predicting personal somatic telomere length using patient blood test data

Biological aging underlies lifestyle-related diseases. It can be assessed by measuring personal somatic cell telomere length. However, measuring the telomere length is laborious, and its clinical surrogate parameters have not been developed. This study analyzed the correlation between telomere length in peripheral leukocytes and laboratory data to select test items relating closely to biological aging. We established formulas from these clinical data to predict the personal telomere length. The subjects were patients having visited Kyushu University Beppu Hospital from 2012 to 2015. Two hundred and thirty-two patients were enrolled. The blood data were collected and telomere lengths were measured by Southern blotting method. The patients showed significant correlations between the telomere length and several blood test data with a sex-related difference. Candidate formulas are as follows: Predicted telomere length (kb) in men = 8.59 - 0.037 × Age (years) + 0.024 × Hemoglobin (g/dL); Predicted telomere length (kb) in women = 4.83 - 0.019 × Age (years) + 0.23 × Albumin (g/dL) + 0.0001 × White blood cells (/mm³) + 0.0020 × Red blood cells (× 10⁴/mm³) + 0.0032 × Total cholesterol (mg/dL). Thus, the derived formulas allow for the accurate differential prediction of telomeric length in male and female patients.