TY - JOUR T1 - Short telomeres in patients with chronic schizophrenia who show a poor response to treatment JF - Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience JO - JPN SP - 244 LP - 247 VL - 33 IS - 3 AU - Wu-Yang Yu AU - Hsueh-Wen Chang AU - Ching-Hua Lin AU - Chung-Lung Cho Y1 - 2008/05/01 UR - http://jpn.ca/content/33/3/244.abstract N2 - Objective: Telomere shortening has been observed in many human diseases, including atherosclerosis, cancer, aging syndromes, Alzheimer disease and vascular dementia. The present study aimed to investigate the mean telomere lengths of patients with schizophrenia.Methods: We analyzed the lengths of telomeric DNA, comparing 2 groups of patients with schizophrenia (34 good responders and 34 poor responders). A control group of 76 healthy volunteers was also included. Blood samples were obtained, and telomere length was measured by Southern blot analysis on the mean length of terminal restriction fragment (TRF).Results: Compared with the control group, a significant amount of telomere shortening was found in peripheral blood leukocytes from patients with schizophrenia who experienced poor response to antipsychotics (p < 0.001).Conclusion: Shortened telomere length in chronic schizophrenia may be a trait marker caused by oxidative stress, and the ensuing cellular dysfunction may be a factor contributing to the progressive deterioration in treatment-resistant schizophrenia. ER -