Shorter Telomere Length Is Associated With Older Age, Poor Sleep Hygiene, and Orthopedic Injury, but Not Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, in a Cohort of Canadian Children.

There was no uninjured comparison group, so the study cannot say whether either injury group had abnormal telomere length or whether mild traumatic brain injury shortened telomeres. Only 292 of 686 participants with usable genetic data had enough DNA for telomere length analysis, and the analyzed group differed from the larger cohort on site, race, parent education, and material or social deprivation. Telomere length was measured at one main postacute timepoint, so changes over time were not tracked. The 29 participants who provided saliva at 3 months were too few to support firm conclusions about later telomere length changes. The site difference did not remain significant after correcting for multiple comparisons. The study is observational, so associations with sleep hygiene, age, and injury group do not show cause.

Funding came from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation, and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.

Do not conclude that telomere length is a useful biomarker for diagnosing or predicting mild traumatic brain injury in children. The raw comparison between mild traumatic brain injury and orthopedic injury was not significant, there was no uninjured group, and the sleep hygiene finding is an association, not proof that improving sleep changes telomere length or recovery.