Research Paper Volume 5, Issue 9 pp 704—716
QTL mapping of leukocyte telomere length in American Indians: The Strong Heart Family Study
- 1 Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70112, USA;
- 2 Department of Genetics, Texas Biomedical Research Institute, San Antonio, TX 78227, USA;
- 3 Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA;
- 4 Missouri Breaks Industries Research Inc., Timber Lake, SD 7625, USA;
- 5 Center for American Indian Health Research, University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, Oklahoma City, OK 73104; USA
Received: August 21, 2013 Accepted: September 9, 2013 Published: September 11, 2013
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.100600How to Cite
Abstract
Telomeres play a central role in cellular senescence and are associated with a variety of age-related disorders such as dementia, Alzheimer's disease and atherosclerosis. Telomere length varies greatly among individuals of the same age, and is heritable. Here we performed a genome-wide linkage scan to identify quantitative trait loci (QTL) influencing leukocyte telomere length (LTL) measured by quantitative PCR in 3,665 American Indians (aged 14 – 93 years) from 94 large, multi-generational families. All participants were recruited by the Strong Heart Family Study (SHFS), a prospective study to identify genetic factors for cardiovascular disease and its risk factors in American Indians residing in Oklahoma, Arizona and Dakota. LTL heritability was estimated to be between 51% and 62%, suggesting a strong genetic predisposition to interindividual variation of LTL in this population. Significant QTLs were localized to chromosome 13 (Logarithm of odds score (LOD) = 3.9) at 13q12.11, to 18q22.2 (LOD = 3.2) and to 3p14.1 (LOD = 3.0) for Oklahoma. This is the first study to identify susceptibility loci influencing leukocyte telomere variation in American Indians, a minority group suffering from a disproportionately high rate of type 2 diabetes and other age-related disorders.