Association of alcohol consumption with telomere length in humans: a systematic review

Abstract

Telomeres are complex nucleoprotein structures with specific proteins of noncoding terminal regions of linear chromosomes of eukaryotic cells. Telomere DNA consists of a large number of short sequence repeats (TTAGGG in vertebrates). Telomeres protect chromosomes from their fusion and degradation, limit the proliferative potential of the cell, participate in the segregation of chromosomes during cell division, etc. Reduction of telomeres length is an important factor with significant impact on cell viability and function, aging, and leads to the development of various diseases including cancer. Alcohol abuse has a significant impact on a person's health. Ethanol consumption by a human potentially affects the length of chromosome telomeres on the cellular level. Current review represents systematic analysis of studies on the effect of alcohol consumption on telomere length in humans. PubMed and eLIBRARY.RU databases were explored for the combinations of the terms ("Ethanol" OR "Alcohol") AND "Telomer" with a limitation on the publication date until 01 January 2011. The search resulted in 269 studies. In accordance with the preset criteria, total 238 studies were excluded from the analysis, and 3 publications were excluded due to unavailability of full text. A total of 28 epidemiological and clinical studies were included for this study review. The association of alcohol consumption with shortening of telomeres was reported in 16 of the studies conducted with various populations and cohorts including individuals with alcohol abuse, alcohol dependence, and some genetic variants of alcohol metabolism enzymes. 12 studies reported alcohol consumption was not associated with change in telomere length. The analysis of reviewed studies allows to conclude that they are ambiguous and that there is further urgency to study the effect of alcohol on telomere length by engaging modern methods for its determination.