Telomere attrition is attributed to Alzheimer's disease (AD), major depressive disorder, stress levels, physical inactivity, short sleep duration, and reduced educational abilities. In this article, we tried to assess the association between the telomere length in peripheral blood leukocytes and level of cognitive impairment and its dependence on age and sex.Healthy subjects and patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and different AD stages were recruited in the study. All patients were assessed by the same standard diagnostic procedure, including neurological examination – Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Blood samples from 66 subjects (18 men and 48 women, mean age 71.2 ± 0.56 years) were collected for DNA extraction from peripheral mononuclear cells (PBMC). Relative telomere length (RTL) was measured by monochrome multiplex polymerase chain reaction.Obtained in the study data indicate that RTL in PBMCs has a statistically significant association with MMSE score (p<0.02). Moreover, the sex-specific difference was observed for the association between telomere length and various parameters of MMSE. Also, it has been found that a decrease in RTL by one unit is associated with an increase in the odds to get AD with the odds ratio of 2.54 (95% CI, 1.25 to 5.17).The results obtained in this research are in coherence with other studies that telomere length may be a valuable biomarker of cognitive decline. However, the potential need for longitudinal studies of telomere length to estimate the influence of hereditary and environmental factors remains.

Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Background. Patients with ischemic heart diseases form the majority group of cardiac diseases. Studies on the roles and mechanisms of microRNAs taking part in cardiac pathophysiology have become the focus of research worldwide. Purpose. To elucidate whether microRNAs could be markers of atherosclerotic lesions, and further explore the mechanism of microRNAs in ischemic heart diseases.  Methods. In general, 40 patients were investigated in our Clinic. Blood tests, echocardiography (with two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography), ECG, coronary angiograms, microRNA detection were conducted. The patients were divided into two groups, i.e., a control group (Group A) without atherosclerotic lesion and a group with proven coronary artery disease (Group В). The data were analyzed using SPSS Statistics 20.0 Results. According to the level of circulating microRNA, a significant association between miR-122 and coronary artery lesion was identified (р=0.033). The results are shown in Figure 1. Besides, the positive moderate correlation was also revealed (r= 0.337, р=0.036). These data show miR-122 as a robust biomarker for predicting atherosclerosis lesions, and it plays certain role in pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. Conclusion. Particularly, microRNA-122 fulfils the criteria of good biomarkers due to their key-role in severity assessment. The correlation between obtained coronary artery lesion results and epigenetic markers was found. The circulating microRNA has also improved the predictive power for diagnostics of ischemic heart disease, which is crucially important for patients and possible biochemical markers for control of treatment. Abstract Figure.