M’kacher R, Colicchio B, Marquet V, et al. - In this retrospective analysis, researchers ascertained whether telomere shortening and/or loss are risk factors for infertility. They analyzed cytogenetic slides of cultured peripheral lymphocytes of 50 fertility-treated patients and 150 healthy donors, including 100 age-matched donors. According to results, the mean telomere length of infertility-consulted patients was substantially lower than that of healthy donors of comparable ages. In addition, patients with infertility displayed significantly more extreme telomere loss and telomere doublet formation than healthy controls. The results show the feasibility of analyzing telomere aberrations in addition to chromosomal aberrations, utilizing cytogenetic slides. The main common cytogenetic characteristic of patients with infertility is telomere attrition and/or dysfunction, leading to potential implications for fertility evaluation. Pending further studies, such techniques which correlate the outcome of assisted reproduction and telomere integrity status can represent a novel and useful diagnostic and/or prognostic tool for medical care in this field.