ArticlePloS one2012
Childhood growth, IQ and education as predictors of white blood cell telomere length at age 49-51 years: the Newcastle Thousand Families Study.
Article in PloS one, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- Quantifying the impact of early life growth adversity on later life health.Communications medicine · 2025Article
- Association Between Adverse Early Life Factors and Telomere Length in Middle and Late Life.Innovation in aging · 2024Article
- Micronutrient status and leukocyte telomere length in school-age Colombian children.European journal of nutrition · 2020Article
- Association between socioeconomic markers and adult telomere length differs according to sex: Pro-Saúde study.Brazilian journal of medical and biological research = Revista brasileira de pesquisas medicas e biologica · 2020Article
- Early life growth and adult telomere length in a Filipino cohort study.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2019Article
- Association of birth outcomes and postnatal growth with adult leukocyte telomere length: Data from New Delhi Birth Cohort.Maternal & child nutrition · 2019Article
- Leukocyte telomere length is associated with elevated plasma glucose and HbA1c in young healthy men independent of birth weight.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- A scoping systematic review of social stressors and various measures of telomere length across the life course.Ageing research reviews · 2018Article
- Early life adiposity and telomere length across the life course: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Wellcome open research · 2017Article
- Early-Life Intelligence Predicts Midlife Biological Age.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2016Article
- The relationship between peripheral blood mononuclear cells telomere length and diet - unexpected effect of red meat.Nutrition journal · 2016Observational
- Socioeconomic factors and leukocyte telomere length in a multi-ethnic sample: findings from the multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis (MESA).Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2013Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundTelomere length is emerging as a potential factor in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease. We investigated whether birth weight, infant growth, childhood cognition and adult height, as well as a range of lifestyle, socio-economic and educational factors, were associated with white blood cell telomere length at age 49-51 years.
methodsThe study included 318 members of the Newcastle Thousand Families Study, a prospectively followed birth cohort which includes all individuals born in Newcastle, England in May and June 1947, who attended for clinical examination at age 49-51 years, and had telomere length successfully measured using real-time PCR analyses of DNA extracted from peripheral blood mononuclear cells.
resultsNo association was found between birth weight and later telomere length. However, associations were seen with other factors from early life. Education level was the only predictor in males, while telomere length in females was associated with gestational age at birth, childhood growth and childhood IQ.
conclusionsWhile these findings may be due to chance, in particular where differing associations were seen between males and females, they do provide evidence of early life associations with telomere length much later in life. Our findings of sex differences in the education association may reflect the sex differences in achieved education levels in this generation where few women went to university regardless of their intelligence. Our findings do not support the concept of telomere length being on the pathway between very early growth and later disease risk.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.