Common variants near TERC are associated with mean telomere length
Veryan Codd, Massimo Mangino, Pim van der Harst, Peter S Braund, Michael Kaiser, Alan J Beveridge, Suzanne Rafelt, Jasbir Moore, Chris Nelson, Nicole Soranzo, Guangju Zhai, Ana M Valdes, Hannah Blackburn, Irene Mateo Leach, Rudolf A de Boer, Masayuki Kimura, Abraham Aviv, Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, Alison H Goodall, Willem Ouwehand, Dirk J van Veldhuisen, Wiek H van Gilst, Gerjan Navis, Paul R Burton, Martin D Tobin, Alistair S Hall, John R Thompson, Tim Spector, Nilesh J Samani, Veryan Codd, Massimo Mangino, Pim van der Harst, Peter S Braund, Michael Kaiser, Alan J Beveridge, Suzanne Rafelt, Jasbir Moore, Chris Nelson, Nicole Soranzo, Guangju Zhai, Ana M Valdes, Hannah Blackburn, Irene Mateo Leach, Rudolf A de Boer, Masayuki Kimura, Abraham Aviv, Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, Alison H Goodall, Willem Ouwehand, Dirk J van Veldhuisen, Wiek H van Gilst, Gerjan Navis, Paul R Burton, Martin D Tobin, Alistair S Hall, John R Thompson, Tim Spector, Nilesh J Samani
Abstract
We conducted genome-wide association analyses of mean leukocyte telomere length in 2,917 individuals, with follow-up replication in 9,492 individuals. We identified an association with telomere length on 3q26 (rs12696304, combined P = 3.72 x 10(-14)) at a locus that includes TERC, which encodes the telomerase RNA component. Each copy of the minor allele of rs12696304 was associated with an approximately 75-base-pair reduction in mean telomere length, equivalent to approximately 3.6 years of age-related telomere-length attrition.
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Source: PubMed