War on telomere: Telomere shortening in War-Exposed Syrian Refugees

Abstract

Abstract A telomere is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences at each end of a chromosome, which protects the end of the chromosome. The cellular environment plays an essential role in regulating telomere length. Also, there is growing evidence that harsh conditions in the environment of humans increase the telomere shortening level. In this study, the effects of exposure to war and the duration of exposure to war on telomere length were investigated. In addition, the anxiety and depression status of the participants and the effect of anxiety and depression on telomere length were also examined. A group of 40 cases exposed to war and had to migrate to Turkey, and a control group of 40 who were not exposed to war were examined according to their anxiety and depression status. They were evaluated according to the Hospital and Anxiety Score (HADS). Also, the between the war exposed and control groups were evaluated according to their telomere length. The telomere length of the samples was analyzed with Real-Time Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-qPCR) method. While the telomere length of the group exposed to war was 8.27 ± 0.68 kb, the telomere length of the control group was 8.96 ± 0.43 kb. In addition, a significant relationship was found between increased exposure to war and the shortening of telomeres. This study showed a significant relationship between war exposure and telomere shortening.