Telomere length variations in 6 mucosal cell types of gastric tissue observed using a novel quantitative fluorescence in situ hybridization method.

We developed a novel method for evaluating telomere length in 6 cell types of noncancerous and cancerous mucosal tissues from 11 cases of gastric neoplasm using the quantitative fluorescence in situ hybridization method with telomere and centromere peptide nucleic acid probes. Our telomere length estimates were determined from the background-corrected telomere intensity divided by the background-corrected centromere intensity (telomere-to-centromere ratio). Our results indicated that telomere lengths in each of the cases studied were reduced in turn from fibroblasts to fundic gland cells, to glandular neck cells, and then to surface foveolar cells. However, the telomere lengths of intestinalized cells located among fundic glands were not always shorter than those of the other cell types, as reported previously by others. Helicobacter pylori infection was suggested to induce the telomere shortening seen in the fundic glands. Although the mean telomere lengths varied among the 8 gastric cancer cases, correlation of the telomere lengths with the Ki-67 labeling index was established after normalization with the fibroblast measurements. We conclude that our telomere-to-centromere ratio method can reliably estimate the telomere lengths of the 6 cell types in the gastric mucosa and clarifies the relationship between proliferative activity and the telomere length of cancer cells.