Parental age effects on offspring telomere length across vertebrates: a meta-analysis

Telomeres shorten with advancing age in numerous species, and shorter telomeres are linked to increased mortality risk. While parental age at conception can influence offspring telomere length, the magnitude and direction of this effect differ across studies, species, and parental sexes. A significant knowledge gap therefore exists in understanding how parental age influences offspring telomere length across vertebrates. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to examine the effects of paternal and maternal age at conception on offspring telomere length, incorporating 99 effect sizes from 30 human studies and 49 effect sizes from 12 non-human vertebrates. Within the human studies, there was a positive overall parental age effect on offspring telomere length, while no effect was found in the non-human vertebrate studies after adjusting for study, estimate, and phylogenetic effects. There was considerable heterogeneity in both human and non-human studies. In human studies, heterogeneity was mainly attributed to between-study variance, and in non-human studies to phylogeny. Parental age effect estimates were correlated with the laboratory methods used for measuring telomere length in all studies. In human studies, the interaction between parental sex and offspring sex, and the cell type used for telomere extraction affected the parental age effect estimates. In non-human vertebrates, the parental age effects were more positive when the parents’ identity was controlled for in the study. We recommend that future research be conducted on a broader range of taxa, test for within-parent effects, and follow standardized reporting practices to enhance data comparability.