telomere shortening was rapid in the blood cells leading up until a few years before cancer diagnosis. In those years before diagnosis, the telomere lengths appeared to stabilize.
Men who developed cancers were compared with those that didn’t for the 13 years prior to diagnosis or exclusion by using a quantitative PCR measurement (which is problematic). Firstly, they found was two different curves with the cancer group showing a more rapid shortening trend. This is consistent with my stem cell theory of aging and most of the extant studies.
In case you find it hard to see what the ravages of stem cell deterioration do to a person over 10 decades, watch as this wonderful woman, Alice, enjoys watching herself for the first time on film
Google alerts for “telomeres” posted this interesting study validating my idea that replicative senescence is at the heart of liver disease. They engineered mice to have poor telomere repair and then watched as the large cell liver histology typical in hepatitis and cirrhosis developed.
Truly, the best argument against my Stem Cell Theory of Aging (since every Axiom in it is completely standard scientific orthodoxy) is that “it couldn’t be that simple because the best efforts of scientists have been looking elsewhere.”
