Figure 9.

Decline in telomere length with age differs between lymphocytes and granulocytes. The median telomere length in nucleated blood cells from 835 healthy individuals ranging from birth (umbilical cord blood) to 102 years of age were measured by flow FISH. The results were used to calculate the telomere attrition over time using linear regression in three age segments. (A) Median telomere length in lymphocytes (black dots). (B) Median telomere length in granulocytes (gray dots). Breakpoints in the piece-wise linear regression lines are marked by rectangles and the three age groups are marked by dotted vertical gray lines at 1 and 18 years. On average 8 individuals were tested per age-year. (C) At any given age, a wide range of telomere length was observed and the decline in telomere length with age in lymphocytes was more pronounced than in granulocytes. The shaded area represents the estimated length of subtelomeric DNA. Note that in older individuals, on average only 1–2 kb of telomere repeats were present in lymphocytes. The figure and its legend are reproduced from the article by Aubert et al. (2012a) distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. Copyright: © 2012 Aubert et al.