Socioeconomic status and telomere length: the West of Scotland Coronary Prevention Study

Background: It has been hypothesised that socio-economically deprived people age more rapidly than their more advantaged counterparts and this is biologically manifest in shorter telomeres. However, in the very few studies conducted, substantial uncertainty exists regarding this relationship. Methods: In the present investigation, 1542 men in the West of Scotland Primary Prevention Study responded to a series of enquiries about their socioeconomic position (educational attainment, employment status, area-based deprivation), had their physical stature measured (a proxy for of early life social circumstances), and provided a blood specimen from which Leucocyte DNA was extracted and telomere length ascertained. Results: There was no strong evidence that any of these four indices of socioeconomic position was robustly related to telomere length. The only exception was employment status: men who reported being out of work had significantly shorter telomere than those who were employed (p-value: 0.001). Conclusion: In this cross-sectional study – the largest to date to examine the relationship – we found little evidence of an association between socioeconomic status and telomere length.