title: Long telomere length predicts poor clinical outcome in esophageal cancer patients.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Abnormal telomere length is widely reported in various human cancers, and it is considered to be an important hallmark of cancer. However, there is remarkably little consensus on the value of telomere length in the prognostic evaluation of esophageal cancers. Here, we attempted to determine the association of variable telomere length with clinical outcome of esophageal cancer patients.
  
  
  METHODS
  Using real-time quantitative PCR, we examined relative telomere lengths (RTL) in a cohort of esophageal cancer and normal esophageal tissues, and statistically investigated the association between RTL and clinical outcomes of esophageal cancer patients.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The majority of esophageal cancers in this study had longer RTLs as compared to adjacent non-tumor tissues. Enhanced tumor RTL was associated with smoking habit, poor differentiation, advanced tumor stage, lymph node metastasis and cancer related death. In particular, a close relationship between longer RTL and poor survival was fully demonstrated by using cox regression and Kaplan-Maier survival curves.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We found frequent telomere elongation in esophageal cancer tissues, and demonstrated longer RTL may be an independent poor prognostic factor for esophageal cancer patients.
authors.affiliation: Department of Endocrinology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710061, People's Republic of China; Department of Rheumatology, Xi'an No. 5 Hospital, Xi'an 710082, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: lyywjplxj@163.com.
authors.forename: Yanyan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lv
authors.affiliation: Department of Thoracic Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710061, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: zhangyongyang05@163.com.
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Endocrinology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710061, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: 245228632@qq.com.
authors.forename: Xinru
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Endocrinology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710061, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: xiaojuanren0803@163.com.
authors.forename: Xiaojuan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.affiliation: Department of Endocrinology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710061, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: wmc_2010@stu.xjtu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Meichen
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Endocrinology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710061, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: tiansijia5020@163.com.
authors.forename: Sijia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tian
authors.affiliation: Department of Endocrinology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710061, People's Republic of China; Key Laboratory for Tumor Precision Medicine of Shaanxi Province, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710061, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: phou@mail.xjtu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hou
authors.affiliation: Department of Endocrinology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710061, People's Republic of China; Key Laboratory for Tumor Precision Medicine of Shaanxi Province, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710061, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: shibingy@126.com.
authors.forename: Bingyin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: Department of Endocrinology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710061, People's Republic of China; Key Laboratory for Tumor Precision Medicine of Shaanxi Province, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710061, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: yangqi2015@mail.xjtu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Yang
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D004938:Esophageal Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011379:Prognosis; D012737:Sex Factors; D015996:Survival Rate; D016615:Telomere
keywords: Biomarker; Clinical outcome; Esophageal cancer; Relative telomere length