{"doi":"10.17615/g2hj-t223","title":"Leukocyte Telomere Length and Coronary Artery Calcium","abstract":"Patients with a history of myocardial infarction display shortened leukocyte telomere length (LTL), but conflicting findings have been reported on the relation between LTL and subclinical coronary artery atherosclerosis, as expressed in coronary artery calcium (CAC). We examined the relation between LTL, measured by Southern blots, with CAC in 3,169 participants in the NHLBI Family Heart Study. Participants consisted of 2,556 whites, 613 blacks, 1,790 women and 1,379 men. The odds of having CAC≥100 for the shortest LTL tertile versus the longest LTL tertile were 1.95 (1.28, 3.16) in white males and 1.76 (1.18, 2.45) in white females, after adjusting for multiple covariates of CAC. The corresponding odd ratios for blacks were 1.53 (0.67, 3.50) and 0.87 (0.37, 2.00). Tests for trend across LTL tertiles were p=0.002 in white males, p=0.006 in white females, p=0.32 in black males and p=0.74 in black females. The associations, or lack of associations, were independent of C-reactive protein levels and other risk factors for CAC. As previously shown in other studies, whites displayed a shorter LTL than blacks (p<0.0001). In conclusion, the higher the coronary artery atherosclerotic burden in whites, the shorter the LTL. This LTL-atherosclerosis connection is not found in blacks. The mechanisms for the racial difference in LTL, CAC and their inter-relations do not seem to be related to inflammation and merit further research.","journal":"UNC Libraries","year":2020,"id":141096,"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":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9615,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":226941,"name":"Abraham Aviv","orcid":"0000-0002-7441-0227","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":321566,"name":"Gerardo Heiss","orcid":"0000-0002-5418-5288","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":324210,"name":"Michael A. Province","orcid":"0000-0001-6102-774X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":479066,"name":"Paul N. Hopkins","orcid":"0000-0002-9118-0427","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":262998,"name":"J. Jeffrey Carr","orcid":"0000-0002-4398-8237","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":402603,"name":"Steven C. Hunt","orcid":"0000-0001-8235-2170","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":605894,"name":"Masayuki Kimura","orcid":"0000-0002-1445-6266","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:17:20.701143Z","pmid":null,"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":[]}