Table 1. Results of telomere length genome-wide association meta-analysis and replication analysis.

N refers to the number of individuals meta-analysed for each SNP and for rs11125529 and rs296734, the additional samples used in replication). The sample size for rs2736100 is smaller than for other loci as this SNP is only present on certain genotyping platforms and due to weak LD structure within the region cannot be imputed reliably. The Effect Allele refers to the allele that is associated with shorter telomere length explaining why all the betas are negative. EAF refers to effect allele frequency.

												Effect on LTL expressed as amount of
SNP	Chr	Position	Gene	N	Effect Allele	Other Allele	EAF	Beta	SE	p-value	Explained Variance	Equivalent age-related attrition*	Base pairs†
GWA meta-analysis
rs10936599	3	170,974,795	TERC	37669	T	C	0.252	−0.097	0.008	2.54E-31	0.36%	3.91	117.3
rs2736100	5	1,339,516	TERT	25842	A	C	0.514	−0.078	0.009	4.38E-19	0.31%	3.14	94.2
rs7675998	4	164,227,270	NAF1	34694	A	G	0.217	−0.074	0.009	4.35E-16	0.19%	2.99	89.7
rs9420907	10	105,666,455	OBFC1	37653	A	C	0.865	−0.069	0.010	6.90E-11	0.11%	2.76	82.8
rs8105767	19	22,007,281	ZNF208	37499	A	G	0.709	−0.048	0.008	1.11E-09	0.09%	1.92	57.6
rs755017	20	61,892,066	RTEL1	37113	A	G	0.869	−0.062	0.011	6.71E-09	0.09%	2.47	74.1
rs11125529	2	54,329,370	ACYP2	37653	C	A	0.858	−0.056	0.010	4.48E-08	0.08%	2.23	66.9
rs2967374	16	80,767,362	MPHOSPH6	37437	G	A	0.790	−0.045	0.009	2.70E-07	-	-	-
Selective Replication
rs11125529	2	54,329,370	ACYP2	10254	C	A	0.864	−0.053	0.070	4.70E-03	-	-	-
rs2967374	16	80,767,362	MPHOSPH6	9063	G	A	0.790	−0.004	0.031	7.80-01	-	-	-

^*Estimates of the per allele effect on average age-related telomere attrition in years (based on data in Supplementary Fig 3).

^†Estimates of the per allele effect on LTL in base pairs calculated from the equivalent age-related attrition in T/S ratio as described in the main text.