Journal
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN GENETICS
Volume 18, Issue 3, Pages 385-389Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/ejhg.2009.178
Keywords
telomere length; heredity; gender; age
Funding
- Swedish Cancer Society
- The Swedish Research Council [2003-5158, 2006-4472, 2006-2754]
- Medical Faculty, Umea University
- Lion's Cancer Research Foundation at Umea University
- Kempe foundation
- County Councils of Vasterbotten and Norrbotten [LSHC-CT-2004-502943]
- European Union [LSHC-CT-2004-502943, Health-F2-2007-200950]
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Telomere length is documented to have a hereditary component, and both paternal and X-linked inheritance have been proposed. We investigated blood cell telomere length in 962 individuals with an age range between 0 and 102 years. Telomere length correlations were analyzed between parent-child pairs in different age groups and between grandparent-grandchild pairs. A highly significant correlation between the father's and the child's telomere length was observed (r=0.454, P<0.001), independent of the sex of the offspring (father-son: r=0.465, P<0.001; father-daughter: r=0.484, P<0.001). For mothers, the correlations were weaker (mother-child: r=0.148, P=0.098; mother-son: r=0.080, P=0.561; mother-daughter: r=0.297, P=0.013). A positive telomere length correlation was also observed for grandparent-grandchild pairs (r-0.272, P-0.013). Our findings indicate that fathers contribute significantly stronger to the telomere length of the offspring compared with mothers (P=0.012), but we cannot exclude a maternal influence on the daughter's telomeres. Interestingly, the father-child correlations diminished with increasing age (P=0.022), suggesting that nonheritable factors have an impact on telomere length dynamics during life. European Journal of Human Genetics (2010) 18, 385-389; doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2009.178; published online 14 October 2009
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