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Telomere length in circulating serum DNA as a novel non-invasive biomarker for cirrhosis: a nested casecontrol analysis
Liver International, 08/21/2012
Clinical Article
Wan S et al. – The study presents the first epidemiological evidence that relative telomere length (RTL) in serum DNA could potentially be used as a simple, inexpensive and non–invasive marker of cirrhosis risk.
Methods- In this nested case-control study, the authors used real-time quantitative PCR to determine the relative telomere length (RTL) in serum DNA samples from 100 HBV-related cirrhosis cases and 100 frequency-matched HBV controls, and evaluated the associations between RTL and cirrhosis risk by logistic regression analyses.
- They found that cirrhotic cases had a significantly longer RTL (median, 0.36; range, 0.08-1.87) than non-cirrhotic controls (median, 0.20; range, 0.05-1.11) (P<0.0001).
- Compared with subjects with short RTL, those with long RTL had a significantly increased cirrhosis risk [odds ratio, 2.76, 95% confidence interval, 1.50-5.10; P=0.001].
- Quartile analysis further indicated a dose-response effect for this association.
- Compared with patients with the lowest quartile of RTL, the cirrhosis risk for those with the second, third and highest quartile of RTL was 2.68 (0.91-7.87, P = 0.073), 3.37 (1.32-10.54, P=0.013) and 6.64 (2.41-18.32, P<0.0001) respectively (Ptrend<0.0001).
- Moreover, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve increased from 0.60 (epidemiological variables) to 0.72 (epidemiological variables plus RTL), with statistically significant difference assessed by bootstrap analysis.