ArticleThe journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences2018
Does Telomere Length Indicate Biological, Physical, and Cognitive Health Among Older Adults? Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study.
Article in The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 21 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.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Combined physical and cognitive training enhances telomere length in mild cognitive impairment patients.BMC geriatrics · 2026Trial
- Variation in the Content of Three Tandem Repeats of the Human Genome (Ribosomal, Satellite III, and Telomere) in Peripheral Blood Leukocyte DNA of People of Different Ages (5-101 Years).Journal of aging research · 2025Article
- Race, Educational Attainment, and Sustained High Body Mass Index over 24 Years of Follow-up in Middle-Aged and Older Adults.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2024Article
- Associations of measured and genetically predicted leukocyte telomere length with vascular phenotypes: a population-based study.GeroScience · 2024Article
- Does Adulthood Socioeconomic Status Predict Subsequent Telomere Length in Racially and Ethnically Diverse Women?Journal of biomedical and life sciences · 2024Article
- Telomere Length, Health, and Mortality in a Cohort of Older Black South African Adults.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2023Article
- Review
- Differences between multimodal brain-age and chronological-age are linked to telomere shortening.Neurobiology of aging · 2022Article
- Longitudinal telomere length profile does not reflect HIV and childhood trauma impacts on cognitive function in South African women.Journal of neurovirology · 2021Article
- Organic food consumption is associated with inflammatory biomarkers among older adults.Public health nutrition · 2021Article
- Aging in Adult Survivors of Childhood Cancer: Implications for Future Care.Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology · 2021Review
- Midlife Leukocyte Telomere Length as an Indicator for Handgrip Strength in Late Life.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2021Article
- Black Older Adults in the Age of Biomarkers, Physical Functioning, and Genomics: Heterogeneity, Community Engagement, and Bioethics.Annual review of gerontology & geriatrics · 2021Article
- Association between prenatal immune phenotyping and cord blood leukocyte telomere length in the PRISM pregnancy cohort.Environmental research · 2020Article
- Association of sleep quality with telomere length, a marker of cellular aging: A retrospective cohort study of older adults in the United States.Sleep health · 2020Article
- Telomere length and aging-related outcomes in humans: A Mendelian randomization study in 261,000 older participants.Aging cell · 2019Article
- Sex differences in the association between salivary telomere length and multimorbidity within the US Health & Retirement Study.Age and ageing · 2019Article
- Comparability of biological aging measures in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Study, 1999-2002.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2019Article
- Biological Risk Profiles Among Latino Subgroups in the Health and Retirement Study.Innovation in aging · 2019Article
- Demographic and developmental patterns in telomere length across adolescence.Biodemography and social biologyArticle
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Telomere length (TL) has been suggested as a biomarker that can indicate individual variability in the rate of aging. Yet, it remains unclear whether TL is related to recognized indicators of health in an aging, older nationally representative sample. We examine whether TL is associated with 15 biological, physical, and cognitive markers of health among older adults ages 54+. TL was assayed from saliva using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (T/S ratio) in the 2008 Health and Retirement Study (n = 4,074). We estimated probability of high-risk levels across indictors of health by TL and age-singly and jointly. TL was associated with seven indicators of poor functioning: high-density lipoprotein and total cholesterol, cystatin C, pulse pressure, body mass index, lung function, and walking speed. However, after adjusting for age, associations were substantially attenuated; only associations with cholesterol and lung function remained significant. Additionally, findings show TL did not add to the predictive power of chronological age in predicting poor functioning. While TL may not be a useful clinical marker of functional aging in an older adult population, it may still play an important role in longitudinal studies in young and middle aged populations that attempt to understand aging.
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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.