Abstract
The correlations between telomerase activity in gastric cancer and two groups of factors, hTR and hTERT, and TRF1 and TRF2 were compared and analyzed. Telomerase activity was semi-quantatively measured by the F-TRAP technique in 51 gastric cancer patients, and hTR and hTERT activity was quantified by the real-time PCR technique. TRF1 and TRF2 were also analyzed immunohistochemically to determine the frequency of these factors in cell nuclei. Telomerase activity was detected in 78.4% of the cancer tissue samples, and the mean activity value was 88.7. hTR activity was detected in 98.0% of the cancer samples, and its mean activity was 8.349: hTERT activity was detected in 96.0% of the cancer samples, and its mean activity was 3.05. TRF1 and TRF2 were detected in the cell nuclei of 45.1% and 42.9%, respectively, of the cancer samples. The frequency of telomerase activity detection was significantly higher among the samples with high hTR activity (p=0.04), and the frequency of telomerase activity detection was significantly higher among the samples with high hTERT activity (p=0.03). However, no correlations were observed between telomerase activity and either TRF1 or TRF2 expression. These findings suggested that hTR and hTERT are correlated with the expression of telomerase activity.
