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Abstract
Objective: To investigate the associations of placental telomere length with placental abruption (PA) risk and interactions between placental telomere length and placental mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) copy number on PA risk.
Materials and methods: Relative telomere length and mtDNA copy number in placental samples collected from 105 cases and 73 controls were measured in two batches using qRT-PCR. Mean differences in relative telomere length between PA cases and controls were examined. After creating batch-specific median cutoffs for relative telomere length (84.92 and 102.53) and mtDNA copy number (2.32 and 1.42), interaction between the two variables was examined using stratified logistic regression models.
Results: Adjusted mean difference in relative telomere length between PA cases and controls was −0.07 (p > 0.05). Among participants with low mtDNA copy number, participants with short relative telomere length had a 3.07-fold higher odds (95% CI: 1.13–8.38) of PA as compared with participants with long relative telomere length (the reference group). Among participants with high mtDNA copy number, participants with short relative telomere length had a 0.71-fold lower odds (95% CI: 0.28–1.83) of PA as compared with the reference group (interaction p values = 0.03). Conclusion: Findings suggest complex relationships between placental telomere length, mtDNA copy number and PA risk which warrant further larger studies.
Declaration of interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose. This study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Health, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD059827 and T32HD052462), the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (K01HL10374), and support by the National Cancer Institute to Roswell Park Cancer Institute Genomics Shared Resource (P30CA016056).