Verificação de comprimento telomérico em pacientes com Transtorno Afetivo Bipolar e sua relação com aspectos clínicos

Abstract

Introduction: Bipolar Disorder (BD) is a mood disorder with progressive worsening in functional impairment. Telomeres are a nucleoproteic complex at chomossomes ends that protect them from end to end fusion and DNA degradation. Telomeres shorten as cell division occurs and it is associated with celular aging and can be accelerated as a result of stress exposure. Objective: Characterize bipolar telomere shortening dynamics, as well as to verify its risk factors in BD sample. Metlhod: Eighty five BD patients and 95 healthy controls were paired for age, sex and educational level. Volunteers were submitted to a psychiatric interview and clinical evaluation. It was performed a Real Time Quantitative PCR in order to verify telomere length. Results: Patients presented shorter telomeres when compared to controls, athough no specific clinical features was stablished as a risk factor. Telomere shortening did not occur homogeneously along BD group, since no significant differences were found between patients and controls belonging to long telomere category. Conclusions: This result points to the presence of protective factors within this subgroup of BD patients. It can be concluded that accelerated telomere shortening is a vulnerability marker, which is associated with stress exposure.