Non-Dynamic Association of Depressive and Anxiety Disorders With Leukocyte Telomere Length?

TO THE EDITOR: We applaud the attempt of Verhoeven and colleagues (1) to examine the relationship over time between depressive and anxiety disorders and leukocyte telomere length (LTL) shortening. We propose, however, that the absence of a relationship in their data may be due to measurement error. For the following reasons, measurement precision in their studywas low relative to the effect thatwas assessed; that is, the variation related to depressionor anxiety in the LTL shortening slope, which was on average 13.3 base pairs (bp) per year:

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