“…Most studies investigating telomerase in autoimmune diseases have found increased telomerase activity or hTERT gene expression in disease versus healthy states (Katayama and Kohriyama, 2001;Kurosaka et al, 2001;Kurosaka et al, 2003;Kurosaka et al, 2006;Qi et al, 2013;Tarhan et al, 2008;Wu et al, 2000;Wu et al, 1999a;Yudoh et al, 1999). However, one study observed no difference (Vazirpanah et al, 2017) and two studies reported lower hTERT mRNA expression in patients compared to healthy controls (Tarhan et al, 2008;Zhang et al, 2016). Interestingly, differences in telomerase activity were observed between active and inactive disease (Katayama and Kohriyama, 2001), probably due to changes in inflammatory and oxidative stress levels.…”