Telomere Length in Peripheral Blood Predicts Survival in Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma

Abstract

Telomeres are repetitive structures located at chromosome ends. Previous studies have indicated that blood cell telomeres may serve as a biomarker for cancer risk. In addition, we recently reported that blood telomere length predicted survival in patients with breast cancer. In the present study, we examined whether blood telomere length may act as a predictor for survival in newly diagnosed patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma. Furthermore, we analyzed telomere length in tumor samples and corresponding kidney cortex. Relative telomere length (RTL) was measured on extracted DNA using real-time PCR. Interestingly, and in line with our previous findings in breast cancer, patients with the longest blood telomeres ( fourth quartile) had a significantly worse prognosis compared with patients with shorter blood RTL (P = 0.005). A highly significant association was found between long blood telomeres and a poor outcome in patients with nonmetastatic disease (P < 0.001), whereas patients with distant metastases had a poor survival regardless of blood RTL (P = 0.432). No correlations were found between blood RTL and various clinical variables, such as erythrocyte sedimentation rate, hemoglobin, and thrombocyte count. Multivariate Cox regression analysis verified long blood RTL as an independent negative prognostic marker. In contrast, telomere length in kidney cortex and tumor tissue did not predict survival. In conclusion, our results indicate that blood RTL may predict kidney cancer survival, with implications for future treatment strategies. [Cancer Res 2009;69(7):2896-901]

Depressive Symptoms and Short Telomere Length Are Associated with Increased Mortality in Bladder Cancer Patients

“…Our findings differ from those of multivariate analysis findings in a longitudinal population-based study of cancer-free individuals (19), and studies of recently diagnosed cancer patients (37, 38) that found telomere length was associated with cancer mortality. Discrepancies in findings may be due to differences in telomere length assessment methodology, tumor type and telomere length response to different types of cancer disease.…”

Longer Relative Telomere Length in Blood from Women with Sporadic and Familial Breast Cancer Compared with Healthy Controls

“…Telomere shortening has been associated with various cancers, including bladder, small cell lung, basal cell, esophageal, and papillary thyroid cancers (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20). Longer telomeres have been associated with clear cell renal carcinoma (21). Several studies have examined lymphocyte telomere length in relation to breast cancer risk with conflicting results.…”

Telomeres and telomerase in normal and malignant B‐cells

“…Once considered as a mere remnant of the proliferative history of the neoplastic clone, this feature is currently considered to play a role in establishing the malignant phenotype. Again, this notion is supported by the clear association between telomere length and prognosis in most human cancers [72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81]. There are a number of potential outputs linking telomere shortening and malignant phenotype.…”