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Individuals with similar risk-factor profiles can vary widely in whether and when they develop coronary heart disease (CHD). To explore whether variation in biological aging might be associated with CHD variation, researchers examined baseline telomere length in leukocytes among hypercholesterolemic men age 45 to 74 enrolled in the West of Scotland Primary Prevention Study, a randomized, placebo-controlled trial of pravastatin. Telomeres, the extreme ends of chromosomal DNA, get shorter as people age.
Baseline telomere length was available for 484 men who developed CHD during a mean follow-up of 5 years and for 1058 matched controls who did not. Mean telomere length decreased, per decade, by 9% among cases and by 6% among controls — not a si…