Research Paper|Volume 16, Issue 18|pp 12593—12607

Study of the role of leukocyte telomere length-related lncRNA NBR2 in Alzheimer’s disease

Wenjie Li¹, Haoyan Chen², Xiaofan Yuan³, Qi Yao¹, Mingjiong Zhang²

¹Department of Geriatrics, The First Affiliated Hospital of Ningbo University, Ningbo 315000, China
²Department of Geriatrics, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Geriatrics, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210000, China
³Department of Radiology of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210011, China

* Joint first author

Received: March 16, 2024Accepted: July 17, 2024Published: September 16, 2024

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.206107

Copyright: © 2024 Li et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Alzheimer’s Syndrome (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease that is prevalent in middle-aged and elderly people. As the disease progresses, patients gradually lose the ability to take care of themselves, which brings a heavy burden to the family. There is a link between leukocyte telomere length (LTL) and cognitive ability. To search for possible pathogenic mechanisms and potential therapeutic agents, we demonstrated a causal link between LTL and AD using Mendelian randomization analysis (MR). The expression of the target gene NBR2 and the downstream mRNA GJA1 and GJA1-related genes, pathway enrichment, and association with immune cells were further explored. Using the gene cluster-drug target interaction network, we obtained potential therapeutic drugs. Our study provides evidence for a causal link between AD and LTL, suggesting medicines that may treat and alleviate AD symptoms.