Not getting enough sleep in childhood has been linked to accelerated cell aging at the genetic level and low life expectancy, scientists say in an article published in the Journal of Pediatrics.
"It is not yet clear if this process can be reversed by restoring sleep patterns, but it can be said that parents and their children are better off following the recommendations of doctors and sleeping 9-11 hours a day," says Sarah James of Princeton. University (USA), quoted by New Scientist.
Telomeres are the ends of chromosomes found in the nucleus of every cell in the human body. Telomeres protect DNA from damage. With each cell division, they become shorter, when their length is not enough for a new division, the cell dies.
More recently, scientists have discovered that telomere length and condition can change not only with age, but also as a result of various body processes associated with depression, poverty and stress. In particular, a large amount of oxidants and other aggressive molecules in cells leads to an abnormally rapid reduction in the length of telomeres, and, accordingly, to their accelerated aging.
James and her colleagues uncovered another factor that leads to telomere contraction and related effects, observing the chromosome arrangement and behavior of over 1,500 married couples and their children from 1998 to the present day. Scientists regularly asked parents how long their children slept, and periodically took blood samples from them and measured the length of telomeres in the cells of the children.
Observations have shown that there was a quite definite connection between poor sleep and telomere length - children who slept for about 7-8 hours had shorter telomeres than their peers who followed the daily routine.
On average, according to measurements by James and her colleagues, every hour of sleep deprivation leads to a decrease in telomeres by 1.5%, which is comparable to the reduction of the ends of chromosomes due to stress, parenting in a single parent, depression and other social factors.
Interestingly, such shortening of telomere length did not affect health in any way - on average, children with both very short and long telomeres equally suffered from "ordinary" diseases or severe developmental disorders. Why this happens, scientists do not yet know, but they plan to find out in the course of subsequent observations of larger groups of children and parents.
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