Posted on 10/01/2006 6:32:34 PM PDT by blam
fascinating.......bookmark
00:01 02 October 2006
NewScientist.com news service
John Pickrell
Osteoarthritis, a degenerative and debilitating inflammation of the joints, may be a sign that sufferers are ageing more quickly than healthy people of the same age, a new study suggests.
Guangju Zhai, Tim Spector and colleagues at St Thomas' Hospital in London, UK, looked at telomere length – a measure of relative ageing – in the white blood cells of over one thousand people. They found that those with osteoarthritis had shorter telomeres and were an average of 11 years “biologically older” than non-sufferers of the same age.
Telomeres are caps on the end of chromosomes made up of multiple repeats of “nonsense” DNA. Every time a cell divides, the telomeres become a little shorter, providing a convenient way to measure the relative age of a cell. When the telomeres have shortened to nothing, the cells can no longer divide and they die. This is part of the natural ageing process .
Many factors can make telomeres shorten, such as genetics or the damage caused by oxygen free-radicals. These are toxic chemicals produced as a by-product of metabolism or by other factors, including tobacco or sunlight. Smoking and obesity have both been shown to make telomeres shorten more rapidly.
Expectations confirmed
To test whether there was a link between the rate of ageing and osteoarthritis, Spector and his team took a group of 1100 people, mostly female twins, and used hand X-rays to test for osteoarthritis. They also tested for telomere length in the white blood cells of the participants.
(Click on the site for the rest of the article)
Very interesting read.
Crohn's.
yep. and they mention psoriasis and ezcema too ...
M.S., and a host of other autoimmune diseases may have a potential for a cure here.
blam, thank you for the post. I am bookmarking this article. A wonderful discovery.
bttt and a ping for a non-flu medical development
self ping for later
btt
Interesting articles.
Yup. I just had my annual check-up and my cholestoral level was up. I told my doctor I wasn't taking a higher dose of cholestoral medicine so he added 500mg of niacin a day to my cholestoral lowering regime.
My spelling of cholestoral is correct, yours is wrong.
Well just D**n , I used the official spelling checker right here on Free Republic.....
.......................
Spell Checker likes my version better.....rejects yours.....
Gives me this...... cholesterol
Okay, how do you spell potato?
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Dan?
Is that you?
Ask your Doctor about Zetia,...helps move up the good LDL level and push down the bad....reading the label ....says do not use with alcohol...wonder if that includes beer.....?
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