Association between leukocyte telomere length and glioma risk: A case-control study

Abstract

Background. 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. Methods. 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. Results. 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