American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access originally published online on February 12, 2008
American Journal of Epidemiology 2008 167(7):799-806; doi:10.1093/aje/kwm380
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ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS |
Telomere Length and Mortality: A Study of Leukocytes in Elderly Danish Twins
1 Center of Human Development and Aging, New Jersey Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, NJ
2 Epidemiology and Statistics Units, Institute of Public Health, Danish Twin Registry and Danish Aging Research Center, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
3 Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Correspondence to Dr. Abraham Aviv, Center of Human Development and Aging, Room F-464, New Jersey Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, 185 South Orange Avenue, Newark, NJ 07103 (e-mail: avivab{at}umdnj.edu).
Received for publication October 2, 2007. Accepted for publication November 28, 2007.
Leukocyte telomere length, representing the mean length of all telomeres in leukocytes, is ostensibly a bioindicator of human aging. The authors hypothesized that shorter telomeres might forecast imminent mortality in elderly people better than leukocyte telomere length. They performed mortality analysis in 548 same-sex Danish twins (274 pairs) aged 73–94 years, of whom 204 pairs experienced the death of one or both co-twins during 9–10 years of follow-up (1997–2007). From the terminal restriction fragment length (TRFL) distribution, the authors obtained the mean TRFL (mTRFL) and the mean values of the shorter 50% (mTRFL50) and shortest 25% (mTRFL25) of TRFLs in the distribution and computed the mode of TRFL (MTRFL). They analyzed the proportions of twin pairs in which the co-twin with the shorter telomeres died first. The proportions derived from the intrapair comparisons indicated that the shorter telomeres predicted the death of the first co-twin better than the mTRFL did (mTRFL: 0.56, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.49, 0.63; mTRFL50: 0.59, 95% CI: 0.52, 0.66; mTRFL25: 0.59, 95% CI: 0.52, 0.66; MTRFL: 0.60, 95% CI: 0.53, 0.67). The telomere-mortality association was stronger in years 3–4 than in the rest of the follow-up period, and it grew stronger with increasing intrapair difference in all telomere parameters. Leukocyte telomere dynamics might help explain the boundaries of the human life span.
aged; leukocytes; mortality; survival analysis; telomere; twins
Abbreviations: CI, confidence interval; LTL, leukocyte telomere length; TRFL, terminal restriction fragment length
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