Social and economic disadvantage are hypothesized to increase the risk of disease and death via accelerated biological aging. Given that US blacks are socially and economically disadvantaged relative to whites, health disparities scholars expected that blacks would have shorter telomere length-a biomarker of cell aging-than whites. Yet the majority of studies have found that blacks have longer telomere length than whites. Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (n = 3,761; 28.3% non-Hispanic black, 71.7% non-Hispanic white), we found that leukocyte telomere length was 4.00% (95% CI: 1.12%, 6.87%) longer among blacks compared to whites in the full sample, but differences were greatest among those with lower SES (5.66%; 95% CI: 0.10%, 10.32%), intermediate among those with middle SES (4.14%; 95% CI: 0.05%, 8.24%), and smallest among those with higher SES (2.33%; 95% CI: -3.02%, 7.67%). These results challenge purely genetic explanations for race differences in telomere length and point to a potential social-environmental cause of longer telomere length in US blacks.

中文翻译：

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端粒长度的黑白差异是否取决于社会经济地位？

据推测，社会和经济劣势会通过加速生物衰老而增加疾病和死亡的风险。考虑到美国黑人相对于白人在社会和经济上处于不利地位，健康差异学者预计，黑人将比白人拥有更短的端粒长度（一种细胞衰老的生物标志物）。然而，大多数研究发现，黑人的端粒长度比白人长。使用美国国家健康与营养检查调查（n = 3,761； 28.3％非西班牙裔黑人，71.7％非西班牙裔白人）的数据，我们发现白细胞端粒长度为4.00％（95％CI：1.12％，6.87％）在整个样本中，黑人比白人长得多，但在SES较低的人群中差异最大（5.66％； 95％CI：0.10％，10.32％），在SES中等的人群中差异最大（4.14％； 95％CI：0.05） ％，8.24％），在SES较高的人群中最小（2.33％； 95％CI：-3.02％，7.67％）。这些结果挑战了端粒长度种族差异的纯遗传学解释，并指出了美国黑人端粒长度更长的潜在社会环境原因。