Human telomerase reverse transcriptase protein expression is associated with survival in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma

xlomafota13 shared this article with you from Inoreader Human telomerase reverse transcriptase protein expression is associated with survival in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma Via International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Pathology Int J Clin Exp Pathol. 2022 Jan 15;15(1):29-37. eCollection 2022. ABSTRACT Despite improvements in diagnosis and treatment, the 5-year survival of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), no matter the location, remains low, averaging 50%. Telomerase is expressed in 85% of malignancies and may play an important role in human carcinogenesis. Its catalytic component is human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT), which has been thought, but not proven, to be involved in survival with OSCC. We investigated whether hTERT protein was a prognostic factor in OSCC by evaluating its association with clinicopathologic findings and OSCC survival. We found that in comparison to patients with high hTERT expression, patients with low hTERT expression survived significantly longer, including a longer 5-year overall survival. In addition, overall survival was significantly correlated to hTERT expression and the histologic grade and N status of the tumo r. Disease-free survival was significantly related to hTERT expression, the histologic grade and N status of the tumor, and mode of invasion. These results suggest that hTERT protein is involved in cervical lymph node metastasis, that its levels may be increased during carcinogenesis, and that it may influence tumor invasion. We believe that this study is the first to demonstrate that OSCC with high hTERT expression carries a worse prognosis than cases with low hTERT expression. PMID:35145581 | PMC:PMC8822205 View on the web Inoreader. Take back control of your news feed. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.