Alcohol consumption and telomere length: Mendelian randomization clarifies alcohol's effects.

ABSTRACT: Alcohol's impact on telomere length, a proposed marker of biological aging, is unclear. We performed the largest observational study to date (in n = 245,354 UK Biobank participants) and compared findings with Mendelian randomization (MR) estimates. Two-sample MR used data from 472,174 participants in a recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) of telomere length. Genetic variants were selected on the basis of associations with alcohol consumption (n = 941,280) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) (n = 57,564 cases). Non-linear MR employed UK Biobank individual data. MR analyses suggested a causal relationship between alcohol traits, more strongly for AUD, and telomere length. Higher genetically-predicted AUD (inverse variance-weighted (IVW) β = -0.06, 95% confidence interval (CI): -0.10 to -0.

SUBMITTER: Topiwala A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9718662 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature