Blood, Vol. 93 No. 9 (May 1), 1999:
pp. 2824-2830
Rapid Telomere Shortening in Children
Steven L. Zeichner,
Paul Palumbo,
YanRu Feng,
Xiaodong Xiao,
Dennis Gee,
John Sleasman,
Maureen Goodenow,
Robert Biggar, and
Dimiter Dimitrov
From the HIV and AIDS Malignancy Branch, National Cancer Institute,
Bethesda, MD; the Department of Pediatrics, University of Medicine and
Dentistry of New Jersey, New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ; the
Laboratory of Experimental and Computational Biology, National Cancer
Institute, Frederick, MD; the Department of Pediatrics, University of
Florida, Gainesville, FL; and the Viral Epidemiology Branch, National
Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD.
Telomere shortening may reflect the total number of divisions
experienced by a somatic cell and is associated with replicative senescence. We found that the average rate of telomere shortening in
peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) obtained longitudinally from
nine different infants during the first 3 years of life (270 bp per
year) is more than fourfold higher than in adults and does not
correlate with telomerase activity. These results show that the rate of
telomere loss changes during ontogeny, suggesting the existence of
periods of accelerated cell division. Because human immunodeficiency
virus (HIV) preferentially infects actively dividing cells, our
observation suggesting accelerated cell division in children may
provide an explanation for some of the distinctive pathogenic features
of the HIV disease in infants, including higher viral loads and more
rapid progression to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).
