Morton JM, et al. - As severe obesity affects men and women of all races/ethnicities and socioeconomic status, researchers investigated the length of telomeres (repeating strands of DNA that flank mammalian chromosomes and protect coding DNA from progressive degradation after each replication) in obese patients before and after laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery. In addition to obesity, risk factors for aging-related dementia include insulin resistance, lipid abnormality, and inflammation. Telomere shortening is also noted as an age-related change, which has implications such as genomic instability and cancer and has been shown to be associated with high body mass index (calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared). With the aging process, progressive shortening of telomeres in the peripheral blood has been noted that have a negative correlation with oxidative stress and a severe inflammatory state. They identified currently mixed data on the association between surgical weight loss and telomere length.