A Study of the Differences in Telomere Length Between Patients With and Without Food Addiction

Food Addiction is often accompanied by overweight/obesity and a host of co-morbidities. From previous pilot studies, we have determined it is difficult to treat and behavioral interventions have limited effectiveness. To better understand possible genetic relationships with food addiction, a handful of researchers have begun to examine this proposed relationship. A meta-analysis (Darrow et al., 2016) that reviewed the studies examining the association between psychiatric disorders and telomere length involved 14,827 persons. Additionally, Daubenmier et al. (2012) examined the relationships among stress, eating, and metabolic factors with telomerase activity with 47 overweight/obese women. These studies lead us to seek proof of concept, that there may be a relationship between food addiction and telomere length and to better characterize persons with and without Food Addiction to enable us to develop interventions specific to each group. In this pilot we will attempt to provide additional scientific knowledge to confirm/support or negate the hypothesis that telomere length may be related to/contributing to Food Addiction. Davis (2019) conducted a review of literature involving food addiction and genetics. In the review, it is noted that thus far there has been only one study that has assessed whether genetic determinants of food addiction overlapped with drug addiction. Two loci (rs75038630 and 74902201) met GW-significance. However, neither of those loci has previously been associated with eating behaviors. We will examine telomere length in our pilot to provide additional evidence for this gap in the knowledge.

The liquid saliva sample kit that will be used is the Oragene saliva DNA collection kit. See following for more specific information.A 2 mL sample of liquid saliva will be obtained by participants spitting into the Oragene saliva DNA collection kit (Genotek Inc. Ottawa, ON, Canada) containing 1 mL of DNA stabilizing liquid. The samples will stored at room temperature until processing for DNA extraction. The saliva samples will be shipped to a laboratory at the University of California San Francisco where the telomere length will be measured by using the monoplex quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) method. This method has been validated against the Southern blot method. Stout et al. (2017) ran the inter-assay variability test and found that the average coefficient of variation was 2.7% for saliva DNA. Both the saliva collection kit and the telomere length measurement are used only for research purposes (i.e., not commercially available). Stout et al. (2017) report that salivary telomere length was correlated with whole blood telomere length (r = 0.56, p = 0.005).