Fazzini F, Lamina C, Raschenberger J, et al. - Researchers determined if there exists a link between relative telomere length and mortality in a large cohort of patients suffering from chronic kidney disease stage G3 and A1-3 or G1-2 with overt proteinuria (A3) at enrollment. Using a quantitative PCR method, peripheral blood samples were analyzed for relative telomere length among 4,955 patients from the German Chronic Kidney Disease (GCKD) study, an ongoing prospective observational cohort. Overall 4,926 patients had full four-year follow-up, in whom, 354 deaths were documented. Relative telomere length was identified as a strong as well as an independent predictor of all-cause mortality. In a model adjusted for age, gender, baseline eGFR, urine albumin/creatinine ratio, diabetes mellitus, prevalent cardiovascular disease, LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, smoking, body mass index, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, C-reactive protein and serum albumin, each reduction of 0.1 relative telomere length unit was found to be highly related to a 14% raised risk of mortality. Overall, in patients with moderate chronic kidney disease, findings revealed a link of shorter telomere length with all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality and death because of infections.