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Multicenter Study
. 2019 Jun;41(3):351-361.
doi: 10.1007/s11357-019-00080-4. Epub 2019 Jun 22.

Telomere length and cancer mortality in American Indians: the Strong Heart Study

Pooja Subedi  1 , Stefano Nembrini  1 , Qiang An  2 , Yun Zhu  1 , Hao Peng  1   3 , Fawn Yeh  4 , Shelley A Cole  5 , Dorothy A Rhoades  6 , Elisa T Lee  4 , Jinying Zhao  7
Affiliations
Multicenter Study

Telomere length and cancer mortality in American Indians: the Strong Heart Study

Pooja Subedi et al. Geroscience. 2019 Jun.

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate whether leukocyte telomere length (LTL) predicts the risk for cancer mortality among American Indians participating in the Strong Heart Study (1989-1991). Participants (aged 45-74 years) were followed annually until December 2015 to collect information on morbidity/mortality. LTL was measured by qPCR using genomic DNA isolated from peripheral blood. The association between LTL and risk for cancer mortality was examined using a multivariable Cox proportional hazard model, adjusting for age, gender, education, study site, smoking, alcohol use, physical activity, systolic blood pressure, fasting blood glucose, obesity, and low- and high-density lipoprotein. Of 1945 participants (mean age 56.10 ± 8.17 at baseline, 57% women) followed for an average 20.5 years, 220 died of cancer. Results showed that longer LTL at baseline significantly predicts an increased risk of cancer death among females (HR 1.57, 95% CI 1.08-2.30), but not males (HR 0.74, 95% CI 0.49-1.12) (p for interaction 0.009). Specifically, compared with the women with the longest LTL (fourth quartile), those in the third, second, and first quartiles showed 53%, 41%, and 44% reduced risk for cancer death, respectively. The findings highlight the importance of sex-specific analysis in future telomere research.

Keywords: American Indians; Biological aging; Cancer mortality; Strong Heart Study; Telomere length.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Kaplan-Meier Plots for survival function of cancer by gender. P value was obtained using log-rank test. Q1, first quartile; Q2, second quartile; Q3, third quartile; Q4, fourth quartile. a Females. b Males
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