Association of leukocyte telomere length with echocardiographic left ventricular mass: the Framingham heart study.

Background— Leukocyte telomere length (LTL) decreases over the adult life course owing to the cumulative burden of oxidative stress, inflammation, and exposure to vascular risk factors. Left ventricular (LV) mass is a biomarker of long-standing exposure to cardiovascular disease risk factors. We hypothesized that LTL is related inversely to LV mass. Methods and Results— We related LTL (measured by Southern blot analysis) to echocardiographic LV mass and its components (LV diastolic dimension and LV wall thickness) in 850 Framingham Heart Study participants (mean age 58 years, 58% women) using multivariable linear regression with adjustment for age, sex, height, weight, systolic blood pressure, hypertension treatment, and smoking. Overall, multivariable-adjusted LTL was positively related to LV mass (β-coefficient per SD increase 0.072; P=0.001), LV wall thickness (β=0.053; P=0.01), and LV diastolic dimension (β=0.035; P=0.09). We observed effect modification by hypertension status (P for interaction=0.02 ...