1. ¹Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital of Heraclio, Heraclio, Crete, Greece
2. ²Department of Genetics, Saint Savas Hospital, Athens, Greece
3. ³Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Biology, University of Athens, Athens 15711, Greece
4. ⁴'G. Papanicolaou' Research Center of Oncology, 'Saint Savas' Hospital, Athens 11522, Greece

Correspondence: Dr M Talieri, 'G. Papanicolaou' Research Center of Oncology, 'Saint Savas' Hospital, 171, Alexandras Avenue, Athens 11522, Greece. E-mail: talieri@otenet.gr or mtalieri@yahoo.com or talieri@agsavvas-hosp.gr

Revised 5 April 2005; Accepted 27 April 2005; Published online 28 June 2005.

Abstract

Telomerase is a reverse transcriptase that maintains telomeres by adding telomeric TTAGGG repeats to the ends of human chromosomes. The aim of this study was to evaluate quantitatively the mRNA expression of telomerase catalytic subunit (hTERT) in different types of intracranial tumours in relation to their histologic pattern and grade and correlate it with progression-free (PFS) and overall survival (OS) of patients. Human telomerase reverse transcriptase mRNA levels were estimated by the use of real time RT–PCR in 68 samples of intracranial tumours. It revealed statistical correlation between hTERT mRNA expression levels and the grade of the tumours (P<0.001). Patients having negative expression of hTERT mRNA had statistically longer PFS (P=0.031) and OS (P=0.047). Cox univariate regression analysis revealed that hTERT mRNA-positive patients had a high and statistically significant risk of relapse (hazard ratio (HR) of 2.24 and P=0.038). In the Cox multivariate regression model, the levels of hTERT mRNA were adjusted for tumour grade and patients age, and since there was statistically significant relationship between the levels of hTERT mRNA and the grade of the tumours (P=0.003 or P=0.006, respectively), hTERT mRNA levels could not be considered as an independent prognostic factor for PFS or OS.