Association between the development of vibration disease and a decrease in the relative length of telomeres among employees of Bashkortostan enterprises

Vibration disease (VD) is an occupational disease that develops with prolonged exposure to industrial vibrations of different frequencies. Previously, the effect of vibration disease on human aging was shown, measured on the basis of physiological indicators. Measuring telomere length is the most common indicator of a person's biological age, which is believed to reflect the difference in a person's aging rate. Telomeres are non-coding regions of heterochromatin and serve to protect the ends of chromosomes from sticking together and from gene erosion.

The study aims to estimate the biological age of employees suffering from vibration disease by determining the relative length of telomeres (RLT).

To conduct the study, the specialists received biomaterials from 51 people aged 35 to 60 years, who were examined at the Ufa Research Institute of Occupational Health and Human Ecology. The study participants were divided into groups depending on the diagnosis of vibration disease and the type of vibration exposure. Determination of the relative length of telomeres was carried out using the real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method. The researchers performed statistical analysis using the scipy.stats package in Python.

The researchers found a statistically significant decrease in the relative telomere length in the group of workers with vibration disease compared with healthy workers. An analysis of the relative telomere length in workers exposed to various types of vibration revealed a statistically significant decrease in telomere length in workers exposed to general vibration compared with other groups studied.

The development of vibration disease is associated with a statistically significant decrease in the average relative telomere length. This biomarker also shows differences depending on the nature of exposure: general vibration is associated with a greater decrease in the relative length of telomeres than local vibration.

Limitations. The disadvantages of the work include the lack of data on working conditions. It was not possible to obtain data on the magnitude of the impact of vibration, which did not allow quantifying its effect on the development of vibration disease and on the relative length of telomeres. Also, the work does not take into account the accompanying harmful production factors, since their heterogeneity and small sample size for each factor did not allow for statistical analysis. The disadvantages include the lack of additional tests, such as the level of cortisol and other hormones associated with the stress response. It is also worth noting the small size of the sample under study, which did not allow a regression analysis to compare the effects of gender, age, and other characteristics on relative telomere length and vibration disease.

Ethics. The study was approved by the bioethics committee of Ufa Research Institute of Occupational Medicine and Human Ecology, extract from protocol No. 02-04 dated 18.04.2024. Informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Contributions:
Karimov D.D. — data collection and processing, experiments, statistical processing, writing and editing the text;
Shaykhlislamova E.R. — study concept and design, data collection and processing, text editing and approval;
Mukhammadieva G.F. — data collection and processing, text writing and editing;
Karimov D.O. — study concept and design, statistical processing, text editing and approval;
Kudoyarov E.R. — experiments, text editing;
Gizatullina A.A. — experiments, text editing;
Smolyankin D.A. — experiments, text editing.

Funding. The study had no funding.

Conflict of interest. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Received: 16.10.2024 / Accepted: 23.02.2025 / Published: 07.04.2025

1. Mukhin N.A., Babanov S.A., eds. Occupational diseases. M.: Geotar-media, 2018 (in Russian).

2. Matoba T. Human response to vibration stress in Japanese workers: lessons from our 35-year studies A narrative review. Industrial Health. 2015; 53(6): 522–32. https://doi.org/10.2486/indhealth.2015-0040

3. Dotsenko O.I. Activity of glutathione system in blood of mice under vibration stress conditions. ScienceRise. 2015; 11(6): 39–46. https://doi.org/10.15587/2313-8416.2015.54809 (in Russian).

4. Ulhôa M.A., Marqueze E.C., Kantermann T., Skene D., Moreno C. When does stress end? Evidence of a prolonged stress reaction in shiftworking truck drivers. Chronobiology International. 2011; 28(9): 810–8. https://doi.org/10.3109/07420528.2011.613136

5. Kia K., Fitch S.M., Newsom S.A., Kim J.H. Effect of whole-body vibration exposures on physiological stresses: mining heavy equipment applications. Applied Ergonomics. 2020; 85: 103065. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2020.103065

6. Kosarev V.V., Babanov S.A., Vorobyova E.V. Determination of the rate of biological aging in vibration disease. Uspekhi gerontologii. 2011; 24(2): 300–2 https://elibrary.ru/nutwnh (in Russian).

7. Order of the Ministry of Health and Social Development of Russia dated April 27, 2012, No. 417n "On approval of the list of occupational diseases". https://docs.cntd.ru/document/902346847 (in Russian).

8. Kolyada A.K., Vayserman A.M., Krasnenkov D.S., Karaban I.N. Study of telomere length in patients with Parkinson's disease. Zhurnal nevrologii i psikhiatrii im. S.S. Korsakova. 2014; 114(8): 58–61 https://elibrary.ru/stxurh (in Russian).

9. Lai T.P., Wright W.E., Shay J.W. Comparison of telomere length measurement methods. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 2018; 373(1741): 20160451. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2016.0451

10. Cawthon R.M. Telomere measurement by quantitative PCR. Nucleic acids research. 2002; 30(10): e47–e47. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/30.10.e47

11. Virtanen P. et al. SciPy 1.0: fundamental algorithms for scientific computing in Python. Nature methods. 2020; 3(17): 261–272. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-019-0686-2

12. Karimov D.D., Kudoyarov E.R., Mukhammadiyeva G.F., Ziatdinova M.M., Baigildin S.S., Yakupova T.G. Biomarkers of ageing in the study of occupational harm impacts (literature review). Gigiena i Sanitariya. 2021; 100(11): 1328–1332. https://doi.org/10.47470/0016-9900-2021-100-11-1328-1332 https://elibrary.ru/zjkjjh (in Russian).

13. Zhan Y., Hägg S. Telomere length and cardiovascular disease risk. Current Opinion in Cardiology. 2019; 34(3): 270–274. https://doi.org/10.1097/hco.0000000000000613

14. Zimnitskaya O.V. et al. Leukocyte telomere length as a molecular biomarker of coronary heart disease. Genes. 2022; 13(7): 1234. https://doi.org/10.3390/genes13071234

15. Wang T., Jia Z., Li S., Li Y., Yu T., Lu T., Shi Y. The association between leukocyte telomere length and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is partially mediated by inflammation: a meta-analysis and population-based mediation study. BMC Pulm. Med. 2022; 22(1): 320. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12890-022-02114-8

16. Liu R., Xiang M., Pilling L.C., Melzer D., Wang L., Manning K.J., Steffens D.C., Bowden J., Fortinsky R.H., Kuchel G.A., Rhee T.G., Diniz B.S., Kuo C.L. Mid-life leukocyte telomere length and dementia risk: An observational and mendelian randomization study of 435,046 UK Biobank participants. Aging Cell. 2023; 22(7): e13808. https://doi.org/10.1111/acel.13808

17. Chen B. et al. Association between genetically determined telomere length and health‐related outcomes: A systematic review and meta‐analysis of Mendelian randomization studies. Aging Cell. 2023; 22(7): e13874. https://doi.org/10.1111/acel.13874

18. Karimov D.D., Erdman V.V., Kudoyarov E.R., Repina E.F., Karimov D.O. Influence of occupational risk factors on human aging: a literature review. Gigiena i Sanitariya. 2022; 101(4): 375–381. https://doi.org/10.47470/0016-9900-2022-101-4-375-381 https://elibrary.ru/dqamqz (in Russian).

19. Andrasfay T. et al. Aging on the job? The association between occupational characteristics and accelerated biological aging. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B. 2023; 78(7): 1236–1245.

20. McEwen B.S. Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation: central role of the brain. Physiological reviews. 2007; 87(3): 873–904. https://doi.org/10.1152/physrev.00041.2006

21. Kirschbaum C., Hellhammer D.H. Noise and stress-salivary cortisol as a non-invasive measure of allostatic load. Noise Health. 1999; 1(4): 57–65. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12689490/

22. Babisch W., Kröller-Schön S., Daiber A., Münzel T. Cardiovascular effects of noise. Noise and Health. 2011; 13(52): 201–4. https://doi.org/10.4103/1463-1741.80148

23. Pichugina N.N., Eliseev Yu.Yu. Evaluation of occupational risk for health in multi-factor intensive influence. Saratovskiy nauchno-meditsinskiy zhurnal. 2011; 7(2): 347–50 (in Russian).

24. Kharitonov V.I. Assessment of occupational health risk under multifactorial intensive exposure. Rossiyskiy mediko-biologicheskiy vestnik imeni akademika I.P. Pavlova. 2017; 25(4): 575–85. https://doi.org/10.23888/PAVLOVJ20174575-585 (in Russian).

25. Lu Y. et al. Telomere length in peripheral leukocytes is a sensitive marker for assessing genetic damage among workers exposed to isopropanol, lead and noise: the case of an electronics manufacturer. Genes and Environment. 2021; 43(1): 57.

26. Ghimire S., Hill C.V., Sy F.S., Rodriguez R. Decline in telomere length by age and effect modification by gender, allostatic load and comorbidities in National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1999-2002). PLoS One. 2019; 14(8): e0221690. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221690

27. Tomiyama A.J., O'Donovan A., Lin J., Puterman E., Lazaro A., Chan J., Dhabhar F.S., Wolkowitz O., Kirschbaum C., Blackburn E., Epel E. Does cellular aging relate to patterns of allostasis? An examination of basal and stress reactive HPA axis activity and telomere length. Physiol Behav. 2012; 106(1): 40–5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2011.11.016