Association Between Metabolic Syndrome Components, Clinical Characteristics, and Telomere Length: Factor Analysis of...

Telomere length is an acclaimed marker of aging, which has been previously shown to correlate with cardiovascular diseases and metabolic syndrome traits.

To identify the relationship between patient characteristics and telomere length.

The LIPIDOGEN was a random patient sample substudy of LIPIDOGRAM 2015 study (n = 13,724) conducted in primary care facilities in Poland. Data on risk factors, chronic diseases, treatment, and lifestyle were collected. Telomere length was determined with routine PCR from saliva. Factor Analysis for Mixed Data analysis was utilized to discern the principal components of patient clinical profiles. Furthermore, hierarchical clustering was used to obtain clusters of patients based on principal components.

1556 patients (60% female, mean age 51 years) were included in the analysis after the exclusion of outliers and low DNA quality samples. Three clusters of patients were identified. Cluster 1 was characterized by low cardiovascular risk, without significant risk factors. Cluster 2 consisted of patients with a higher incidence of metabolic syndrome (MetS, 62%) and the highest smoking rate (22%). Cluster 3 had the highest incidence of MetS (94%), treatment with statin (62%), and diabetes mellitus (61%), and contained nearly all patients with myocardial infarction (17% of this cluster). Patients in Cluster 1 had significantly longer telomeres than patients in Cluster 2 and 3 (p = 0.01 and p < 0.001 respectively).

The pattern of clinical characteristics marked by classical cardiovascular risk factors including components of MetS, is inversely related to telomere length, underlining the potential role of metabolic disturbances in cellular aging.