Investigation of telomer length in young age ischemic stroke patients

Telomere length is frequently accepted as a biological aging marker. Telomere length has been supported by many studies in the cardiovascular system as a biological aging marker and short telomere length has been associated with arterosclerosis. There are several studies examining the relationship between stroke and telomere length, which is accepted as a biological aging marker, and this relationship has not been clearly demonstrated. In our study, telomere length was studied in young patients with ischemic stroke.The study included 60 patients with a young age ischemic stroke history in the last 3 years and 40 control group of healthy volunteers with a similar age, gender and history of disease, defined as a risk factor for stroke. Telomere length was studied by PCR method in both groups. In our study, the mean telomere length of the patient group (7.52 ± 3.29 kilobase) was significantly higher than the average telomere length of the subjects in the control group. However, telomere length of patients in the study does not show a significant difference between socio-demographic and risk factors for ischemic stroke (systolic BP, diastolic BP, DM, BMI, homocysteine, LDL, HR, HGB, HCT, smoking and alcohol use). This result can be explained by the low sample size compared to other studies and the study design. Our study is very important in terms of being the first study to show such a relationship between long telomere and young age ischemic stroke. This result can be partially explained by the design of the study, ethnicity, sample size, age of the study population and methods of studying telomere length and tissue differences. As a result; in order to better understand the relationship between telomere length and stroke, more studies are needed in a larger number of samples with younger patients in the future.