Journal
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN GENETICS
Volume 21, Issue 10, Pages 1163-1168Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/ejhg.2012.303
Keywords
telomere length; heritability; paternal age effect
Funding
- Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), Erasmus MC
- Centre for Medical Systems Biology (CMSB)
- European Community
- ENGAGE Consortium [HEALTH-F4-2007-201413]
- BHF
- Leicester National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Unit in Cardiovascular Disease
- European Union [259679]
- Innovation-Oriented Research Program on Genomics [SenterNovem IGE05007]
- Centre for Medical Systems Biology and the Netherlands Consortium for Healthy Ageing [050-060-810]
- Netherlands Genomics Initiative
- Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO)
- Unilever Colworth
- Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO: MagW/ZonMW) [904-61-090, 985-10-002, 904-61-193, 480-04-004, 400-05-717, Addiction-31160008 Middelgroot-911-09-032, Spinozapremie 56-464-14192]
- Center for Medical Systems Biology (CSMB, NWO Genomics)
- NBIC/BioAssist/RK [2008.024]
- Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure (BBMRI -NL) [184.021.007]
- VU University's Institute for Health and Care Research (EMGO+)
- ENGAGE [HEALTH-F4-2007-201413]
- European Science Council [ERC-230374, ERC-284167]
- Australian Research Council
- Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)
- NHMRC-European Union Collaborative Research Grant [496739]
- NHMRC Fellowship [619667]
- ARC Future Fellowship [FT0991022]
- Wellcome Trust
- Dept of Health via the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre award
- King's College London
- ERC Advanced Principal Investigator award
- National Eye Institute via an NIH/CIDR
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Telomere length (TL) has been associated with aging and mortality, but individual differences are also influenced by genetic factors, with previous studies reporting heritability estimates ranging from 34 to 82%. Here we investigate the heritability, mode of inheritance and the influence of parental age at birth on TL in six large, independent cohort studies with a total of 19 713 participants. The meta-analysis estimate of TL heritability was 0.70 (95% CI 0.64-0.76) and is based on a pattern of results that is highly similar for twins and other family members. We observed a stronger mother-offspring (r = 0.42; P-value = 3.60 x 10(-61)) than father-offspring correlation (r = 0.33; P-value = 7.01 x 10(-5)), and a significant positive association with paternal age at offspring birth (beta = 0.005; P-value = 7.01 x 10(-5)). Interestingly, a significant and quite substantial correlation in TL between spouses (r = 0.25; P-value = 2.82 x 10(-30)) was seen, which appeared stronger in older spouse pairs (mean age >= 55 years; r = 0.31; P-value = 4.27 x 10(-23)) than in younger pairs (mean age <55 years; r = 0.20; P-value = 3.24 x 10(-10)). In summary, we find a high and very consistent heritability estimate for TL, evidence for a maternal inheritance component and a positive association with paternal age.
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