Linked in

Regions of repetitive DNA sequence called telomeres cap our chromosomes, with shorter telomeres being linked to Alzheimer's disease, cancer and heart ...

According to NHS data, 57 per cent of adults in the UK consumed less than this a week in 2019. “They did not measure the telomeres of people at different time points,” she says. But shorter telomeres were also seen in those who were genetically more likely to consume between 17 and 28 units a week. “Telomere length decreases as we age in normal ageing, but the concern is that shorter telomeres have been linked with lots of diseases of later life like cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease,” says Anya Topiwala at the University of Oxford. The team devised a genetic risk score based on these variants and found that the participants with a higher genetic risk score for increased alcohol consumption were more likely to have shorter telomeres. In both the Biobank and GWAS experiments, the team found that the participants who had been diagnosed with alcohol use disorder had the shortest telomeres.