ArticleRoyal Society open science2019
Controlling for baseline telomere length biases estimates of the rate of telomere attrition.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- 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
- Association of Short-term Change in Leukocyte Telomere Length With Cortical Thickness and Outcomes of Mental Training Among Healthy Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA network open · 2019Trial
- The researcher's guide to selecting biomarkers in mental health studies.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2024Review
- Article
- An exploratory analysis of leukocyte telomere length among pregnant and non-pregnant people.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2022Article
- A Time-Varying Effect Model (TVEM) of the Complex Association of Tobacco Use and Smoke Exposure on Mean Telomere Length: Differences between Racial and Ethnic Groups Assessed in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Measurement of Telomere Length for Longitudinal Analysis: Implications of Assay Precision.American journal of epidemiology · 2021Article
- Different epigenetic signatures of newborn telomere length and telomere attrition rate in early life.Aging · 2021Article
- Telomere attrition rates are associated with weather conditions and predict productive lifespan in dairy cattle.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Seasonal variation in telomere dynamics in African striped mice.Oecologia · 2020Article
- Cellular response to chronic psychosocial stress: Ten-year longitudinal changes in telomere length in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2019Article
- Article
- Why are there associations between telomere length and behaviour?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Longitudinal studies have sought to establish whether environmental exposures such as smoking accelerate the attrition of individuals' telomeres over time. These studies typically control for baseline telomere length (TL) by including it as a covariate in statistical models. However, baseline TL also differs between smokers and non-smokers, and telomere attrition is spuriously linked to baseline TL via measurement error and regression to the mean. Using simulated datasets, we show that controlling for baseline TL overestimates the true effect of smoking on telomere attrition. This bias increases with increasing telomere measurement error and increasing difference in baseline TL between smokers and non-smokers. Using a meta-analysis of longitudinal datasets, we show that as predicted, the estimated difference in telomere attrition between smokers and non-smokers is greater when statistical models control for baseline TL than when they do not, and the size of the discrepancy is positively correlated with measurement error. The bias we describe is not specific to smoking and also applies to other exposures. We conclude that to avoid invalid inference, models of telomere attrition should not control for baseline TL by including it as a covariate. Many claims of accelerated telomere attrition in individuals exposed to adversity need to be re-assessed.
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Registered trials
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