Telomere dynamics in healthy expert meditators: a case control study

Abstract

Abstract Practice of meditation has been suggested to improve telomere regulation. This case-control study compared the leucocyte telomere length (TL) and expression of hTERT and hTR genes, between thirty long-term, skilled meditators and thirty matched non-meditators. 63.34% of the participants were males and the average age of the meditators was 43.83±9.92 years. Meditators had practiced meditation over 6.8 years (±3.27) with 5.82 hours (±3.45) of average daily meditation. TL was found to decrease significantly with increasing age (r=-0.675, p<0.001) but was not associated with other biological variables. The long-term meditators had a significantly longer relative TL compared to the control group (p=0.020). Expression of hTERT (FC=1.3, p=0.020) and hTR (FC=1.4, p=0.029) genes showed significant up-regulation in long-term meditators compared to controls. Further, telomere length (r=0.838, p<0.001) and expression of hTR (r=0.378, p=0.039) and hTERT (r=0.622, p<0.001) genes showed a significant increase with the increasing duration of meditation practice. The regression analysis linking previous data from the same cohort indicated that the expression of hTERT gene significantly predicted the plasma telomerase level (p=0.034). The findings suggest that meditation as a lifestyle practice has multi-level beneficial effects on telomere dynamics with potential to promote healthy aging.