Accelerated telomere attrition is associated with relative household income, diet and inflammation in the pSoBid cohort

Abstract

Background: It has previously been hypothesized that lower socio-economic status can accelerate biological ageing, and predispose to early onset of disease. This study investigated the association of socio-economic and lifestyle factors, as well as traditional and novel risk factors, with biological-ageing, as measured by telomere length, in a Glasgow based cohort that included individuals with extreme socio-economic differences.

Methods: A total of 382 blood samples from the pSoBid study were available for telomere analysis. For each participant, data was available for socio-economic status factors, biochemical parameters and dietary intake. Statistical analyses were undertaken to investigate the association between telomere lengths and these aforementioned parameters.

Results: The rate of age-related telomere attrition was significantly associated with low relative income, housing tenure and poor diet. Notably, telomere length was positively associated with LDL and total cholesterol levels, but inversely correlated to circulating IL-6.

Conclusions: These data suggest lower socio-economic status and poor diet are relevant to accelerated biological ageing. They also suggest potential associations between elevated circulating IL-6, a measure known to predict cardiovascular disease and diabetes with biological ageing. These observations require further study to tease out potential mechanistic links.

Figure 1. Regression analysis plots that highlight household income, housing tenure, and diet score were associated with steeper age-related decline in telomere length.

Faster rates of age-related telomere attrition were observed in individuals with an average income less than £25,000 (7.7% vs 0.6% reduction per decade, p = 0.024, (A)), home tenants (8.7% vs 2.2%, p = 0.038 (B)) and a diet score among the lower 50% of scores (7.7% vs 1.8%, p = 0.05 (C)).