Telomere Length and Risk of Incident Fracture and Arthroplasty: Findings From UK Biobank
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We investigated independent associations between telomere length and risk of fracture and arthroplasty in UK Biobank participants. Leukocyte telomere length (LTL) was measured in baseline samples using a validated polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. We used, in men and women separately, Cox proportional hazards models to calculate the hazard ratio (HR) for incident fracture (any, osteoporotic) or arthroplasty (hip or knee) over 1,186,410 person-years of follow-up. Covariates included age, white cell count, ethnicity, smoking, alcohol, physical activity, and menopause (women). In further analyses we adjusted for either estimated bone mineral density (eBMD) from heel quantitative ultrasound, handgrip strength, gait speed, total fat mass (bioimpedance), or blood biomarkers, all measured at baseline (2006-2010). We studied 59,500 women and 51,895 men, mean ± standard deviation (SD) age 56.4 ± 8.0 and 57.0 ± 8.3 years, respectively. During follow-up there were 5619 fractures; 5285 hip and 4261 knee arthroplasties. In confounder-adjusted models, longer LTL was associated with reduced risk of incident knee arthroplasty in both men (HR/SD 0.93; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.88-0.97) and women (0.92; 95% CI, 0.88-0.96), and hip arthroplasty in men (0.91; 95% CI, 0.87-0.95), but not women (0.98; 95% CI, 0.94-1.01). Longer LTL was weakly associated with reduced risk of any incident fracture in women (HR/SD 0.96; 95% CI, 0.93-1.00) with less evidence in men (0.98; 95% CI, 0.93-1.02). Associations with incident outcomes were not materially altered by adjustment for heel eBMD, grip strength, gait speed, fat mass, or blood biomarker measures. In this, the largest study to date, longer LTL was associated with lower risk of incident knee or hip arthroplasty, but only weakly associated with lower risk of fracture. The relative risks were low at a population level, but our findings suggest that common factors acting on the myeloid and musculoskeletal systems might influence later life musculoskeletal outcomes. © 2022 The Authors. Journal of Bone and Mineral Research published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".