Department of Gastroenterology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minnesota, USA.
Department of Population Health Sciences, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
Clin Transl Gastroenterol. 2014 Mar 6;5(3):e52. doi: 10.1038/ctg.2014.3.
Telomeres are nucleoprotein structures that cap the end of chromosomes and shorten with sequential cell divisions in normal aging. Short telomeres are also implicated in the incidence of many cancers, but the evidence is not conclusive for colorectal cancer (CRC). Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the association of CRC and telomere length.
In this case-control study, we measured relative telomere length from peripheral blood leukocytes (PBLs) DNA with quantitative PCR in 598 CRC patients and 2,212 healthy controls.
Multivariate analysis indicated that telomere length was associated with risk for CRC, and this association varied in an age-related manner; younger individuals (≤50 years of age) with longer telomeres (80-99 percentiles) had a 2-6 times higher risk of CRC, while older individuals (>50 years of age) with shortened telomeres (1-10 percentiles) had 2-12 times the risk for CRC. The risk for CRC varies with extremes in telomere length in an age-associated manner.
Younger individuals with longer telomeres or older individuals with shorter telomeres are at higher risk for CRC. These findings indicate that the association of PBL telomere length varies according to the age of cancer onset and that CRC is likely associated with at minimum two different mechanisms of telomere dynamics.
端粒是一种核蛋白结构，位于染色体末端，可随着正常衰老过程中细胞的连续分裂而缩短。端粒缩短与许多癌症的发生也有关，但在结直肠癌（CRC）中证据并不确凿。因此，本研究旨在评估 CRC 与端粒长度的关系。
在这项病例对照研究中，我们使用定量 PCR 从 598 例 CRC 患者和 2212 名健康对照者的外周血白细胞（PBL）DNA 中测量相对端粒长度。
多变量分析表明，端粒长度与 CRC 的发病风险相关，这种关联与年龄有关；端粒较长（80-99%百分位）的年轻个体（≤50 岁）CRC 的发病风险增加 2-6 倍，而端粒较短（1-10%百分位）的老年个体（>50 岁）CRC 的发病风险增加 2-12 倍。端粒长度的极值与 CRC 的发病风险呈年龄相关的变化。
端粒较长的年轻个体或端粒较短的老年个体患 CRC 的风险更高。这些发现表明，PBL 端粒长度的关联随癌症发病年龄而变化，并且 CRC 可能与至少两种不同的端粒动力学机制有关。
