Leukocyte telomere length is associated with MRI‐thigh fat‐free muscle volume: data from 16 356 UK Biobank adults
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Telomere attrition may share common biological mechanisms with bone and muscle loss with aging. Here, we investigated the association between these hallmarks of aging using data from UK Biobank, a large observational study. METHODS: Leukocyte telomere length (LTL as T/S ratio) was measured using a multiplex qPCR assay at baseline (2006-2010). Bone mineral density (whole body and regional; via dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry), trabecular bone score (via lumbar-spine dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry images), fat-free muscle volume (thighs; via magnetic resonance imaging), and muscle fat infiltration (thighs; via magnetic resonance imaging) were measured during the imaging visit (2014-2018). Regression models were used to model LTL against a muscle or bone outcome, unadjusted and adjusted for covariates. RESULTS: A total of 16 356 adults (mean age: 62.8 ± 7.5 years, 50.5% women) were included. In the fully adjusted model, thigh fat-free muscle volume was associated with LTL in the overall sample (adjusted standardized β (aβ) = 0.017, 95% CI 0.009 to 0.026, P < 0.001, per SD increase in LTL), with stronger associations in men (aβ = 0.022, 95% CI 0.010 to 0.034, P < 0.001) than in women (aβ = 0.013, 95% CI 0.000 to 0.025, P = 0.041) (sex-LTL P = 0.028). The adjusted odds ratio (aOR) for low thigh fat-free muscle volume (body mass index-adjusted, sex-specific bottom 20%) was 0.93 per SD increase in LTL (95% CI 0.89 to 0.96, P < 0.001) in the overall sample, with stronger associations in men (aOR = 0.92, 95% CI 0.87 to 0.99, P = 0.008) than women (aOR = 0.93, 95% CI 0.88 to 0.98, P = 0.009), although the sex difference was not statistically significant in this model (sex-LTL P = 0.37). LTL was not associated with bone mineral density, trabecular bone score, or muscle fat infiltration in the overall or subgroup analyses (P > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: LTL was consistently associated with thigh fat-free muscle volume in men and women. Future research should investigate moderating effects of lifestyle factors (e.g., physical activity, nutrition, or chronic diseases) in the association between LTL and muscle volume.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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 teacher head, 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".