Mendelian Randomization and mediation analysis of leukocyte telomere length and risk of lung and head and neck cancers

Background Evidence from observational studies of telomere length (TL) has been conflicting regarding its direction of association with cancer risk. We investigated the causal relevance of TL for lung and head and neck cancers using Mendelian Randomization (MR) and mediation analyses. Methods We developed a novel genetic instrument for TL in chromosome 5p15.33, using variants identified through deep-sequencing, that were genotyped in 2051...