Evidence of a normal mean telomere fragment length in patients with Ullrich-Turner syndrome.

Clinical and epidemiological studies suggest that premature ageing and increased morbidity and mortality is present in Ullrich-Turner syndrome. We studied telomere restriction fragment length (TRFL) in 30 women with Ullrich-Turner syndrome and 30 age-matched control women. All Turner women had the 45,X karyotype verified by karyotyping. We found no difference in the mean TRFL in the young age group (TS: 7011+/-521 vs C: 7285+/-917 bp, P = 0.3), or in the older age group (TS: 7357+/-573 vs C: 7221+/-621 bp, P = 0.6). In conclusion, our data suggest that Ullrich-Turner syndrome is not associated with excessive telomere loss, at least when studied in peripheral blood leucocytes, and thus quite different from other premature ageing syndromes.