[Prognostic significance of alterations in telomeric repeat length in patients with pathological stage I-II non-small cell lung cancer]

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the correlation between alteration in telomere length and prognosis in patients with pathological stage I-II non-small cell lung cancer. We measured telomeric repeat length and telomerase activity by use of southern blot analysis of terminal restriction fragments and a non-radioactive ELISA-based assay, respectively.Alterations in TRF lengths were present in 17(29.8%) of 57 patients. Patients with altered TRF length had significantly shorter survival than did patients without (P = 0.0051). In multivariate analysis, only alteration in TRF length independently correlated with shortened survival (P = 0.0033).