Department of Oncology, First Affiliated Hospital of Chengdu Medical College, Chengdu, China (S.W., H.J.); State Key Laboratory of Cancer Biology and Experimental Teaching Center of Basic Medicine, Xi'an, China (Y.C., F.Q., X.H., J.X.); Department of Neurosurgery, Tangdu Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China (S.H.); National Engineering Research Center for Miniaturized Detection Systems, School of Life Sciences, Northwest University, Xi'an, China (T.J.); Division of Population Science, Department of Medical Oncology, Kimmel Cancer Center, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (S.W.).
Neuro Oncol. 2014 Apr;16(4):505-12. doi: 10.1093/neuonc/not240. Epub 2013 Dec 22.
Compelling epidemiological evidence indicates that alterations of telomere length are associated with risks of many malignancies in a tumor-specific manner, such as lung cancer, breast cancer, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. However, the association between leukocyte telomere length and glioma risk has not been investigated.
Relative telomere length (RTL) of peripheral blood leukocytes from 467 glioma patients and 467 healthy controls, matched by age and sex, was measured using the real-time PCR-based method in a case-control study. An unconditional multivariate logistic regression model was applied to estimate the association between RTL and glioma risk.
Glioma patients showed notably longer RTL than controls (median, 0.555 vs 0.444; P > .04). RTL was negatively correlated with age in both cases (ρ = -0.430; P < .001) and controls (ρ = -0.388; P < .001). After adjusting for age, sex, smoking status and family history of cancer, multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that there was a U-shaped association between RTL and glioma risk (P for nonlinearity <.001). Compared with individuals in the second tertile of RTL, the odds ratios (95% CI) for participants in the first and third tertiles were 2.16 (range, 1.52-3.09) and 3.51 (range, 2.45-5.00), respectively. Stratified analysis showed that the association between RTL and glioma risk was not modulated by major host characteristics.
Our study demonstrates for the first time that either shorter or longer RTL in peripheral blood leukocytes is associated with increased glioma risk, which warrants further investigation in the future.
强有力的流行病学证据表明，端粒长度的改变与许多恶性肿瘤的风险相关，具有肿瘤特异性，如肺癌、乳腺癌和非霍奇金淋巴瘤。然而，白细胞端粒长度与神经胶质瘤风险之间的关联尚未被研究过。
在一项病例对照研究中，使用实时 PCR 方法测量了 467 例神经胶质瘤患者和 467 名年龄和性别匹配的健康对照者外周血白细胞的相对端粒长度（RTL）。应用无条件多变量逻辑回归模型来估计 RTL 与神经胶质瘤风险之间的关联。
神经胶质瘤患者的 RTL 明显长于对照组（中位数，0.555 比 0.444；P >.04）。RTL 与病例和对照组的年龄均呈负相关（ρ=-0.430；P<.001）和（ρ=-0.388；P<.001）。在校正年龄、性别、吸烟状况和癌症家族史后，多变量逻辑回归分析显示，RTL 与神经胶质瘤风险之间存在 U 形关联（非线性 P <.001）。与 RTL 处于第二 tertile 的个体相比，处于第一 tertile 和第三 tertile 的个体的比值比（95% CI）分别为 2.16（范围，1.52-3.09）和 3.51（范围，2.45-5.00）。分层分析表明，RTL 与神经胶质瘤风险之间的关联不受主要宿主特征的调节。
我们的研究首次表明，外周血白细胞中较短或较长的 RTL 与增加的神经胶质瘤风险相关，这值得在未来进一步研究。
