Major depressive disorder and telomere length appear to have no association, Dr. Naomi M. Simon and her have reported.
A study of 166 adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) and 166 controls found that there was no significant difference in telomere length between MDD patients (mean standard deviation = 9.1) and those without any psychiatric illness (mean SD = 8.9), when measured by Southern blot test or confirmatory quantitative polymerase chain reaction assays, reported Dr. Simon of the department of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and her colleagues.
The study findings did find a significant association between gender and telomerase activity, with higher activity in males with depression, compared with controls (P = .0079), Dr. Simon and her colleagues reported.
“When extensively controlling for a range of measured covariates at entry and in analyses, including age, gender, trauma, and loss, and medical comorbidity, our cross-sectional analyses suggest that telomere length may not be independently associated with MDD,” the authors wrote. “It is possible that some previous positive reports may include unmeasured confounding of the MDD-telomere length relationship, such as medical conditions or obesity, contributing to variability across studies,” they concluded.
Read the full study here: (Psychoneuroendocrinology 2015;58:9-22 [doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen/2015.04.004]).