{"doi":"10.1210/clinem/dgab519","title":"Cross-species Association Between Telomere Length and Glucocorticoid Exposure","abstract":"CONTEXT: Chronic exposure to glucocorticoids (GCs) or stress increases the risk of medical disorders, including cardiovascular and neuropsychiatric disorders. GCs contribute to accelerated aging; however, while the link between chronic GC exposure and disease onset is well established, the underpinning mechanisms are not clear. OBJECTIVE: We explored the potential nexus between GCs or stress exposure and telomere length. METHODS: In addition to rats exposed to 3 weeks of chronic stress, an iatrogenic mouse model of Cushing syndrome (CS), and a mouse neuronal cell line, we studied 32 patients with CS and age-matched controls and another cohort of 75 healthy humans. RESULTS: (1) Exposure to stress in rats was associated with a 54.5% (P = 0.036) reduction in telomere length in T cells. Genomic DNA (gDNA) extracted from the dentate gyrus of stressed and unstressed rats showed 43.2% reduction in telomere length (P = 0.006). (2) Mice exposed to corticosterone had a 61.4% reduction in telomere length in blood gDNA (P = 5.75 × 10-5) and 58.8% reduction in telomere length in the dentate gyrus (P = 0.002). (3) We observed a 40.8% reduction in the telomere length in patients with active CS compared to healthy controls (P = 0.006). There was a 17.8% reduction in telomere length in cured CS patients, which was not different from that of healthy controls (P = 0.08). For both cured and active CS, telomere length correlated significantly with duration of hypercortisolism (R2 = 0.22, P = 0.007). (4) There was a 27.6% reduction in telomere length between low and high tertiles in bedtime cortisol levels of healthy participants (P = 0.019). CONCLUSION: Our findings demonstrate that exposure to stress and/or GCs is associated with shortened telomeres, which may be partially reversible.","journal":"The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism","year":2021,"id":176539,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":21,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8933,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":489035,"name":"Peter P. Zandi","orcid":"0000-0001-8423-2623","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":719190,"name":"Alicia Santos","orcid":"0000-0002-2179-6189","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":719191,"name":"Anna Aulinas","orcid":"0000-0002-1205-7114","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":719939,"name":"Jenny L. Carey","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":719192,"name":"Susan M. Webb","orcid":"0000-0001-7052-6436","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":525496,"name":"Mary E. McCaul","orcid":"0000-0003-2009-4115","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":719193,"name":"Eugenia Resmini","orcid":"0000-0002-7919-4316","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":525495,"name":"Gary S. Wand","orcid":"0000-0001-7877-1057","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":416395,"name":"Richard S. Lee","orcid":"0000-0002-3454-8774","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":86,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:47:23.605867Z","pmid":"34265046","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}