ArticleAmerican journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council2017
Early life infection, but not breastfeeding, predicts adult blood telomere lengths in the Philippines.
Article in American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 29 citations in OpenAlex.
- Telomere length analysis from minimally-invasively collected samples: Methods development and meta-analysis of the validity of different sampling techniques: American Journal of Human Biology.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2021Pooled it
- Global research landscape of telomere biology in infectious diseases: mechanistic links between host-pathogen interactions and immune ageing.Frontiers in aging · 2025Review
- Article
- Association Between Adverse Early Life Factors and Telomere Length in Middle and Late Life.Innovation in aging · 2024Article
- Exclusive breastfeeding lowers the odds of childhood diarrhea and other medical conditions: evidence from the 2016 Ethiopian demographic and health survey.Italian journal of pediatrics · 2021Article
- Testing for paternal influences on offspring telomere length in a human cohort in the Philippines.American journal of physical anthropology · 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
- Older paternal ages and grandpaternal ages at conception predict longer telomeres in human descendants.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Lifetime socioeconomic status and early life microbial environments predict adult blood telomere length in the Philippines.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2018Article
- Reproduction predicts shorter telomeres and epigenetic age acceleration among young adult women.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- The paternal age at conception effect on offspring telomere length: mechanistic, comparative and adaptive perspectives.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Evaluating minimally invasive sample collection methods for telomere length measurement.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2018Article
- Article
- Pilot Study of Absolute Telomere Lengths in Preterm Infants.Nursing researchArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesTelomeres are repetitive DNA at chromosomes ends that shorten with age due to cellular replication and oxidative stress. As telomeres shorten, this can eventually place limits on cell replication and contribute to senescence. Infections are common during early development and activate cellular immune responses that involve clonal expansion and oxidative stress. As such, a high infectious disease burden might shorten blood telomere length (BTL) and accelerate the pace of immune senescence.
methodsTo test this, BTL measured in young adults (21.7 ± 0.3 years old) from the Philippines (N = 1,759) were linked to prospectively collected early life data on infectious burden.
resultsAs predicted, increased early life diarrheal prevalence was associated with shorter adult BTL. The association was most marked for infections experienced from 6 to 12 months, which corresponds with weaning and maximal diarrheal burden. A standard deviation increase in infections at 6-12 m predicts a 45 bp decrease in BTL, equivalent to 3.3 years of adult telomeric aging in this population. Contrary to expectations, breastfeeding duration was not associated with BTL, nor did effects vary by sex.
conclusionsThese findings show that infancy diarrheal disease predicts a marker of cellular aging in adult immune cells. These findings suggest that early life infectious burden may influence late life health, or alternatively, that short TL in early life increases infectious disease susceptibility.
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