TY - JOUR T1 - Telomere length in patients with alcohol-associated liver disease: a brief report JF - Journal of Investigative Medicine JO - J Investig Med SP - 1438 LP - 1441 DO - 10.1136/jim-2021-002213 VL - 70 IS - 6 AU - Nazmul Huda AU - Praveen Kusumanchi AU - Kristina Perez AU - Yanchao Jiang AU - Nicholas J Skill AU - Zhaoli Sun AU - Jing Ma AU - Zhihong Yang AU - Suthat Liangpunsakul Y1 - 2022/08/01 UR - http://hw-f5-jim.highwire.org/content/70/6/1438.abstract N2 - The intact telomere structure is essential for the prevention of the chromosome end-to-end fusions and maintaining genomic integrity. The maintenance of telomere length is critical for cellular homeostasis. The shortening of telomeres has been reported in patients with chronic liver diseases. The telomere length has not been systemically studied in patients with alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD) at different stages, such as alcoholic hepatitis and alcoholic cirrhosis. In this brief report, we observed evidence of telomere shortening without changes in the telomerase activity in the liver of patients with alcoholic hepatitis and alcoholic cirrhosis when compared with controls. The alterations in the genes associated with telomere binding proteins were only observed in patients with alcoholic cirrhosis. Future studies are required to determine the mechanism of how alcohol affects the length of the telomere and if the shortening impacts the disease progression in ALD. ER -