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Objective: To investigate the changes of telomerase activity in benign and malignant ascites fluid., Methods: The technique of telomerase TRAP-PCR-ELISA was employed to detect telomerase activity in ascites cells from 60 patients with benign or malignant ascites fluid, the cytological diagnosis and total tumor marks (carcinoembryonic antigen, et al.) were compared., Results: Telomerase activity in malignant ascites fluid was significantly higher than that in benign group. Positive rate of telomerase activity detected in malignant ascites (90%) was remarkably higher than those in benign group (10%); Compared with the cytological diagnosis and total tumor marks (carcinoembryonic antigen, et al.), telomere ferment test had higher sensitivity (90%), specificity (100%) and stability., Conclusion: Telomerase activity may be an useful and sensitive mark in differential diagnosis of benign and malignant ascites fluid.

Objective: The purpose was to investigate the clinical significance of telomerase activity for tumor diagnosis in ascites cells from patients with ovarian carcinoma., Methods: Thirty ascites specimens from patients with ovarian tumor were examined for telomerase activity by PCR-based TRAP (telomeric repeat amplification protocol) method, and the result of detection was compared with the cytological diagnosis., Results: Telomerase activity was detected in ascites cells from patients with ovarian tumor in 19 of the 20 cytologic-possitive specimens and in 3 of the 7 cytologic-negative specimens and in all the 3 cytologic-suspicious specimens. The positive rate in 30 ascites samples by cytological examination and by the detection of telomerase activity was 66.67% (20/30), and 83.33% (25/30), respectively., Conclusions: The result suggested that measuring telomerase activity in ascites cells would be helpful to cytological examination in diagnosis of patients with ovarian carcinoma.