What is the “Know Your Telomeres” study?

This study is an important stress and cell aging research project being conducted at the Parnassus UCSF Campus.  The purpose of the study is to understand more about telomere length and other markers of aging, how we can best measure these markers, how they are related to health and lifestyle, and how people respond to learning their own personal telomere length results.

If you decide to participate, you will learn whether or not your telomeres are in the short category and how your telomere length changes over the course of a year. At the beginning of the study, we will ask you to complete various questionnaires, and we will collect small amounts of blood, strands of hair, and saliva.  Some participants will be asked to come back for a second study visit when a second blood draw will occur one week later.  All participants will be recontacted a month later, but only half will be told their telomere length (everyone else will find out their telomere length from this visit around 9-10 months later). All participants will be recontacted again 3, 6 and 9 months later to complete similar surveys as on your first visit on lifestyle factors. At 9 months from the telomere results call, you will also be asked to revisit our lab for a final blood draw to again measure your telomere length. Depending on whether you have 2 or 3 visits/assessments (a total of 4 to 6 hours of your time), you will receive between $60 and $75 in checks or retail gift cards for completing the study.

All of your answers and information will be kept completely confidential.  Your participation is voluntary.  As part of the study, you will receive information on your own personal telomere length, which is an experimental measure of cellular aging. You will learn whether you are in the bottom 25% of telomere length from the first blood draw, and you will learn how your telomere length changes over the course of a year.  Telomere length is only an experimental measure at this point, which means that the length of your telomeres cannot provide any sensitive quantitative information about your level of health risks.