{"doi":"10.1111/ijpo.13082","title":"Changes in leukocyte telomere length among children with obesity participating in a behavioural weight control program","abstract":"OBJECTIVE: To examine changes in leukocyte telomere length (LTL) during and after a behavioural weight control program for children with obesity. METHODS: We measured LTL among a cohort of 158 children 8-12 years of age with a body mass index greater than or equal to the 95th percentile for age and sex. Children were 55% female, 29% white, 52% Latinx, 8% Asian and 11% Pacific Islander, other or multiethnic. All children participated in a 6-month, family-based, group behavioural weight control program and were assessed before treatment, after treatment and 1 year after the end of treatment. To test the sample population slope of LTL over the intervention and maintenance time periods, we fit spline mixed-effect regression models. RESULTS: LTL increased an average of 0.09 T/S units per year (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.04 to 0.13; p = 0.0001) during the weight control program intervention period, followed by an average decline of -0.05 T/S units per year (95% CI -0.08 to -0.03; p < 0.0001) during the 1 year of follow-up after the completion of the intervention. Among 26 social, psychological, behavioural and physiological factors we examined, we did not find any predictors of these changes. CONCLUSIONS: LTL increased in response to a behavioural weight control program among children with obesity, suggesting an impact on biological health and cellular aging from participation in a behavioural weight control intervention. LTL may be a useful biomarker for assessing changes in response to behavioural interventions.","journal":"Pediatric Obesity","year":2023,"id":382632,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8726,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":571531,"name":"Janet M. Wojcicki","orcid":"0000-0002-3393-1368","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":661139,"name":"K. Farish Haydel","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":288209,"name":"Jue Lin","orcid":"0000-0001-7216-1610","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":953099,"name":"Dana L. Smith","orcid":"0000-0001-9791-6688","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":362308,"name":"Kristopher Kapphahn","orcid":"0000-0002-5017-8697","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":350487,"name":"Thomas N. Robinson","orcid":"0000-0002-2367-0774","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":11021,"name":"David H. Rehkopf","orcid":"0000-0002-7597-6513","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":30,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:17:20.969491Z","pmid":"37873898","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}