Table 1.

Characteristics of Nurses’ Health Study participants at baseline ^a

Characteristics	Mean (SD) or %
N	17,693
Age (years)	55.5 (6.8)
Follow-up time (years)	22.6 (3.8)
Polygenic risk score of telomere length b	76.2 (16.2)
Paternal age at birth (years)	29.7 (9.7)
Body mass index (kg/m2, BMI)	25.3 (5.4)
physical activity (Mets)	15.1 (21.2)
Alcohol (grams)	5.3 (9.5)
Pack-years of cigarette smoking	12.0 (18.0)
History of cancer	3.8
History of hypertension	28.4
History of hypercholesterolemia	26.7
History of diabetes	5.0
History of heart disease	5.3
Lifetime depression up to 2012 c	42.0
Based on self-reported physician-diagnosed depression only	20.2
Based on self-reported regular antidepressant use only	24.5
Based on the presence of severe depressive symptoms only	27.6
Lifetime clinically-meaningful anxiety up to 2012 d	30.9
GWAS controls	52.8

^aBaseline was defined as the questionnaire cycle (1988 questionnaire) prior to blood draw in 1989–90

^bWeighted sum of the number of risk allele dosage with its published effect estimate for all 9 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that were significantly associated with shorter telomere length published previously. The unit of polygenic risk score corresponds to decreases in base pairs of telomere length.

^cDepression was defined by either self-reported physician-diagnosed depression, regular use of antidepressant medications, or the presence of severe depressive symptoms using published cutpoints (≥10 on the 10-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression and ≥6 on the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale) during follow-up until 2012. 872 (4.9%) had missing information on depression.

^dAnxiety was defined by either Crown-Crisp Index score of 6 or more or Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7 score of 5 or more during follow-up until 2012. 2131 (12.0%) had missing information on anxiety.

Abbreviations: NHS: Nurses’ Health Study; GWAS: genome-wide association study