Telomere length associates with chronological age and mortality across racially diverse pulmonary fibrosis cohorts

Ayodeji Adegunsoye; Chad A Newton; Justin M Oldham; Brett Ley; Cathryn T Lee; Angela L Linderholm; Jonathan H Chung; Nicole Garcia; Da Zhang; Rekha Vij; Robert Guzy; Renea Jablonski; Remzi Bag; Rebecca S Voogt; Shwu-Fan Ma; Anne I Sperling; Ganesh Raghu; Fernando J Martinez; Mary E Strek; Paul J Wolters; Christine Kim Garcia; Brandon L Pierce; Imre Noth

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37193-6

Telomere length associates with chronological age and mortality across racially diverse pulmonary fibrosis cohorts

Nat Commun. 2023 Mar 17;14(1):1489. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-37193-6.

Authors

Ayodeji Adegunsoye^{1

2}, Chad A Newton³, Justin M Oldham⁴, Brett Ley⁵, Cathryn T Lee⁶, Angela L Linderholm⁴, Jonathan H Chung⁷, Nicole Garcia⁶, Da Zhang⁸, Rekha Vij⁶, Robert Guzy⁶, Renea Jablonski⁶, Remzi Bag⁶, Rebecca S Voogt⁶, Shwu-Fan Ma⁹, Anne I Sperling⁶, Ganesh Raghu¹⁰, Fernando J Martinez¹¹, Mary E Strek⁶, Paul J Wolters⁵, Christine Kim Garcia⁸, Brandon L Pierce^{12

13}, Imre Noth⁹

Affiliations

¹ Section of Pulmonary & Critical Care, Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA. deji@uchicago.edu.
² Committee on Genetics, Genomics and Systems Biology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA. deji@uchicago.edu.
³ Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern, Dallas, TX, USA.
⁴ Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of California, Davis, Sacramento, CA, USA.
⁵ Section of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.
⁶ Section of Pulmonary & Critical Care, Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
⁷ Department of Radiology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
⁸ Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA.
⁹ Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
¹⁰ Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle, WA, USA.
¹¹ Pulmonary Critical Care Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York City, NY, USA.
¹² Department of Public Health Sciences, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
¹³ Department of Human Genetics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.

Abstract

Pulmonary fibrosis (PF) is characterized by profound scarring and poor survival. We investigated the association of leukocyte telomere length (LTL) with chronological age and mortality across racially diverse PF cohorts. LTL measurements among participants with PF stratified by race/ethnicity were assessed in relation to age and all-cause mortality, and compared to controls. Generalized linear models were used to evaluate the age-LTL relationship, Cox proportional hazards models were used for hazard ratio estimation, and the Cochran-Armitage test was used to assess quartiles of LTL. Standardized LTL shortened with increasing chronological age; this association in controls was strengthened in PF (R = -0.28; P < 0.0001). In PF, age- and sex-adjusted LTL below the median consistently predicted worse mortality across all racial groups (White, HR = 2.21, 95% CI = 1.79-2.72; Black, HR = 2.22, 95% CI = 1.05-4.66; Hispanic, HR = 3.40, 95% CI = 1.88-6.14; and Asian, HR = 2.11, 95% CI = 0.55-8.23). LTL associates uniformly with chronological age and is a biomarker predictive of mortality in PF across racial groups.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

Ethnicity
Humans
Leukocytes
Proportional Hazards Models
Pulmonary Fibrosis*
Racial Groups
Telomere / genetics

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding