TNF and cardiovascular disorder: On the one hand, a cross-sectional study of 1962 elderly people 70-79 years of age found that elevated serum TNFα was positively associated with increased risk of telomere shortening [21] and another cross-sectional study of 840 patients with cardiovascular disease found that polymorphisms in certain TNF loci were associated with elevated hypersensitive C-reactive protein and shortened telomere length in the peripheral blood [22].