Depression Linked with Accelerated Cellular Aging

Depression can accelerate aging, a new study reported.

The latest study, conducted by Dutch researchers, found that people suffering from depression had shorter telomeres. Telomeres are the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that protect genetic information on the chromosomes.  Length of a telomere can say how old a cell is.

The present study was based on data from 1,900 people who were suffering from depression and 500 people with no known history of any mental disorder. Researchers measured length of telomeres of all participants and found that those with depression had shorter telomeres than the control group, suggesting accelerated cellular growth.

"Psychological distress, as experienced by depressed persons, has a large, detrimental impact on the 'wear and tear' of a person's body, resulting in accelerated biological aging," said study author Josine Verhoeven, a researcher at the Free University in Amsterdam, according to Livescience.

The experts use base pairs (building blocks of DNA) to measure telomere length. In the present study, depressed people had telomeres measuring 5,460 bp long while others had telomeres that were about 5,540 bp long on average, Livescience reported. The study team isn't sure whether depression is shortening the telomeres or if it is the other way around.

This isn't the first time that telomeres have been linked with mental disorders. A recent study had established that people who suffer from anxiety have shorter telomeres. Previous research has also shown that depression can accelerate aging. Premature aging could, in fact, begin during infancy as studies have shown that childhood adversity can shorten telomere length, increasing risk of many diseases. Telomere shortening is also proportional to lifetime exposure to major depressive disorder.

The study is published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

According to data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about one in every ten adults in the country is depressed.