1. Long telomere length predicts poor clinical outcome in esophageal cancer patients
- Author
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Peng Hou, Yong Zhang, Yanyan Lv, Xiaojuan Ren, Xinru Li, Qi Yang, Sijia Tian, Bingyin Shi, and Meichen Wang
- Subjects
Male ,0301 basic medicine ,Oncology ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Esophageal Neoplasms ,Pathology and Forensic Medicine ,03 medical and health sciences ,Sex Factors ,0302 clinical medicine ,Internal medicine ,Humans ,Medicine ,Survival analysis ,Aged ,business.industry ,Proportional hazards model ,Cancer ,Cell Biology ,Middle Aged ,Telomere ,Esophageal cancer ,Prognosis ,medicine.disease ,Survival Rate ,030104 developmental biology ,Real-time polymerase chain reaction ,030220 oncology & carcinogenesis ,Cohort ,Biomarker (medicine) ,Female ,business - Abstract
Background Abnormal telomere length is widely reported in various human cancers, and it is considered to be an important hallmark of cancer. However, there is remarkably little consensus on the value of telomere length in the prognostic evaluation of esophageal cancers. Here, we attempted to determine the association of variable telomere length with clinical outcome of esophageal cancer patients. Materials and methods Using real-time quantitative PCR, we examined relative telomere lengths (RTL) in a cohort of esophageal cancer and normal esophageal tissues, and statistically investigated the association between RTL and clinical outcomes of esophageal cancer patients. Results The majority of esophageal cancers in this study had longer RTLs as compared to adjacent non-tumor tissues. Enhanced tumor RTL was associated with smoking habit, poor differentiation, advanced tumor stage, lymph node metastasis and cancer related death. In particular, a close relationship between longer RTL and poor survival was fully demonstrated by using cox regression and Kaplan-Maier survival curves. Conclusions We found frequent telomere elongation in esophageal cancer tissues, and demonstrated longer RTL may be an independent poor prognostic factor for esophageal cancer patients.
- Published
- 2017