title: Survival of high grade glioma patients depends on their age at diagnosis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Although the prognosis for malignant gliomas is normally dismal, it's not infrequent in neurooncologist's experience to find cases with unusually prolonged survival. In order to understand what factors influence survival of high grade glioma patients, a cohort of 196 high (III-IV) grade glioma patients was investigated for possible association between (1) survival and age at diagnosis; (2) survival and micronuclei in tumor tissue; (3) survival and gender; (4) micronuclei in tumor tissue and age at diagnosis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Patients diagnosed at an older age (>64 years) had a significantly higher hazard as compared to younger patients (<or=64 years), indicating that older patients survived shorter. On the contrary, no association was found between survival and micronuclei or gender.
  
  
  METHODS
  Survival analysis was performed by the Cox' proportional hazards regression model.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Age at diagnosis, together with other established prognostic factors such as histologic characteristics, extent of surgery and Karnofsky Performance Score may to a certain extent predict survival of high grade glioma patients.
authors.affiliation: Molecular Mutagenesis and DNA Repair, Istituto Nazionale Ricerca Cancro, Genova, Italy.
authors.forename: Gianluigi
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Casartelli
authors.forename: Alessandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dorcaratto
authors.forename: Jean Louis
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Ravetti
authors.forename: Simona
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sola
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vitali
authors.forename: Domenico Franco
authors.initials: DF
authors.lastname: Merlo
authors.forename: Guido
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Frosina
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D043171:Chromosomal Instability; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D005910:Glioma / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D053208:Kaplan-Meier Estimate; D008297:Male; D015162:Micronucleus Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008875:Middle Aged; D011379:Prognosis; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models