Setting the trajectory: racial disparities in newborn telomere length.

Objective: To explore racial differences in newborn telomere length (TL) and the effect moderation of the sex of the infant while establishing the methodology for the use of newborn blood spots for TL analyses.

Study Design: Pregnant mothers were recruited from the Greater New Orleans area. TL was determined via monochrome multiplex quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction on DNA extracted from infant blood spots.