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The 9/11 terrorist attacks killed 2,996 people, caused at least $10 billion in property and infrastructure damage, and affected the health and well-being of millions of people throughout New York City and Washington, D.C.
And according to a new study, 9/11 may have also affected the heart health of whole communities in Utah. Researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute saw a decrease in the length of telomeres, which are the segment of DNA at the ends of chromosomes, the length of which determines a cell’s lifespan.
“Heart health and telomere length have been studied for years,” said John Carlquist, PhD, director of the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute Genetics Lab. “It’s widely known that many negative health influences — such as smoking, obesity, or lack of exercise — decrease telomere length and reduce longevity. Stress, anxiety, and depression have also been known to reduce telomere length, but this is the first time we’ve seen the effect of a single event on a community.”
Dr. Carlquist will present his study at the 2015 American College of Cardiology Scientific Sessions on March 14, at 10 a.m., PT, in San Diego.
“We found that 9/11 impacted an entire population thousands of miles away,” he said. “Of the sample population we studied, telomere length decreased and the number of minor heart attacks increased.
“Our findings magnify the importance of taking care of your heart and maintaining healthy stress levels. Because the internet gives us constant access to worldwide news and information, we are sharing a lot more stress commonly than we are used to. This is a new factor in our lives.”
Originally, Dr. Carlquist’s study focused on whether the levels of pollution in the air on a given day or month had an effect on telomere length. But when he looked at the data from September 2001, he noticed a sharp drop in telomere length of the whole population sample from different geographic regions of the state, but he couldn’t understand why the decrease occurred.
“After analyzing the data for a time, someone on our team pointed out that the dramatic decrease in average telomere length occurred around the same time as the terrorist attack,” said Dr. Carlquist. “Finally seeing that connection, we shifted gears on our study and looked at telomere length and heart attack admission rates before and after 9/11.”
The population used in the study consisted of 1,943 patients whose medical information was pulled from Intermountain Healthcare’s database of 30,000 blood samples. Researchers measured the telomere length of these patients one year before and one year after 9/11.
In order to validate their findings, Dr. Carlquist and his team plan to investagate other significantly stressful events that could impact populations, such as the 2008 economic downturn.
Other researchers involved in the study include Richard M. Cawthon, MD, PhD, Stacey Knight, PhD, Benjamin Horne, PhD, Jeffrey S. Rollo, John Huntinghouse, J. Brent Muhlestein, MD, and Jeffrey Anderson, MD.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks killed 2,996 people, caused at least $10 billion in property and infrastructure damage and affected the health and well-being of millions of people throughout New York City and Washington, D.C.
And, according to a new study by researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute, 9/11 may have also affected the heart health of Utah residents.