Higher Daily Air Temperature Is Associated with Shorter Leukocyte Telomere Length: KORA F3 and KORA F4

Abstract

Higher air temperature is associated with increased age-related morbidity and mortality. To date, short-term effects of air temperature on leukocyte telomere length have not been investigated in an adult population. We aimed to examine the short-term associations between air temperature and leukocyte telomere length in an adult population-based setting, including two independent cohorts. This population-based study involved 5864 participants from the KORA F3 (2004−2005) and F4 (2006− 2008) cohort studies conducted in Augsburg, Germany. Leukocyte telomere length was assessed by a quantitative PCR-based method. We estimated air temperature at each participant′s residential address through a highly resolved spatiotemporal model. We conducted cohort-specific generalized additive models to explore the short-term effects of air temperature on leukocyte telomere length at lags 0−1, 2−6, 0−6, and 0−13 days separately and pooled the estimates by fixed-effects meta-analysis. Our study found that between individuals, an interquartile range (IQR) increase in daily air temperature was associated with shorter leukocyte telomere length at lags 0−1, 2−6, 0−6, and 0−13 days (%change: −2.96 [−4.46; −1.43], −2.79 [−4.49; −1.07], −4.18 [−6.08; −2.25], and −6.69 [−9.04; −4.27], respectively). This meta-analysis of two cohort studies showed that between individuals, higher daily air temperature was associated with shorter leukocyte telomere length.