ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Delay discounting, genetic sensitivity, and leukocyte telomere length.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Body mass index is negatively associated with telomere length: a collaborative cross-sectional meta-analysis of 87 observational studies.The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2018Pooled it
- The role of oxytocin in delay of gratification and flexibility in non-social decision making.eLife · 2021Trial
- The dynamic relationship of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and oxytocin: Introducing the concept of neurosocial plasticity.Neuroprotection (Chichester, England) · 2025Review
- Infant buccal telomere length: associations with maternal distress in pregnancy and offspring temperament.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Leveraging related health phenotypes for polygenic prediction of impulsive choice, impulsive action, and impulsive personality traits in 1534 European ancestry community adults.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2023Article
- The antiaging role of oxytocin.Neural regeneration research · 2021Review
- The Association Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Child Telomere Length: Examining Self-Regulation as a Behavioral Mediator.Child development · 2021Article
- Effect of alcohol use disorder on cellular aging.Psychopharmacology · 2019Article
- Association among dispositional mindfulness, self-compassion, and leukocyte telomere length in Chinese adults.BMC psychology · 2019Article
- Oxytocin administration prevents cellular aging caused by social isolation.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2019Article
- Ethanolic Extracts fromInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2018Article
- Stress, Telomeres, and Psychopathology: Toward a Deeper Understanding of a Triad of Early Aging.Annual review of clinical psychology · 2018Review
- Why are there associations between telomere length and behaviour?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Delay discounting is associated with the fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations and resting-state functional connectivity in late adolescence.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Brain Structure Linking Delay Discounting and Academic Performance.Human brain mapping · 2017Article
- All framing effects are not created equal: Low convergent validity between two classic measurements of framing.Scientific reports · 2016Article
- A marker of biological ageing predicts adult risk preference in European starlings,Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
In a graying world, there is an increasing interest in correlates of aging, especially those found in early life. Leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is an emerging marker of aging at the cellular level, but little is known regarding its link with poor decision making that often entails being overly impatient. Here we investigate the relationship between LTL and the degree of impatience, which is measured in the laboratory using an incentivized delay discounting task. In a sample of 1,158 Han Chinese undergraduates, we observe that steeper delay discounting, indexing higher degree of impatience, is negatively associated with LTL. The relationship is robust after controlling for health-related variables, as well as risk attitude-another important determinant of decision making. LTL in females is more sensitive to impatience than in males. We then asked if genes possibly modulate the effect of impatient behavior on LTL. The oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) polymorphism rs53576, which has figured prominently in investigations of social cognition and psychological resources, and the estrogen receptor β gene (ESR2) polymorphism rs2978381, one of two gonadal sex hormone genes, significantly mitigate the negative effect of impatience on cellular aging in females. The current results contribute to understanding the relationship between preferences in decision making, particularly impatience, and cellular aging, for the first time to our knowledge. Notably, oxytocin and estrogen receptor polymorphisms temper accelerated cellular aging in young females who tend to make impatient choices.
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.