Abstract
PURPOSE To analyze the relation between the cytological findings and telomerase activity (TA). METHODS Cervical samples were evaluated and classified according to the Bethesda System. Telomerase activity was measured total product generated values (TPG) using the TRAP assay (telomeric repeat amplification protocol); data were analyzed statistically using the χ2 test, with the level of significance set at p<0.05. RESULTS The study was conducted on 102 patients. Of these, 3.9% showed normal cytological findings, 8.8% showed cervicitis; 2% showed Atypical Squamous Cells of Undetermined Significance (ASCUS); 67.6% showed Low Grade Squamous Intraepithelial Lesion (LSIL); 11.8% showed High Grade Squamous Intraepithelial Lesion (H-SIL) and 5.9% showed Squamous Carcinoma. Among telomerase-positive samples, the TPG values were cervicitis<normal<ASCUS<L-SIL<H-SIL<Carcinoma. CONCLUSION Results show increased telomerase activity with increasing severity of lesion, supporting the association between TA and type of lesion.
Highlights
Telomeres, which form a protective cap on chromosome ends, are usually composed of short G-rich Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) repeats (TTAGGG) complexed with proteins[1,2] with estimated lengths of 5-15 kb in humans[3]
The higher frequencies (100%) of positivity for telomerase activity were found in normal (4/4), Atypical Squamous Cells of Undetermined Significance (ASCUS) (2/2), High Grade Squamous Intraepithelial Lesion (H-SIL) (12/12) and carcinoma (6/6) reports, followed by low grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (L-SILs) with a 75.4% of positivity (52/69), and cervicitis reports with 55.6% (5/9)
Telomerase activity has been demonstrated in a wide variety of human tissues, through malignant tumors or precancerous cells, such as cervical lesion[12,13,14,15]
Summary
Telomeres, which form a protective cap on chromosome ends, are usually composed of short G-rich Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) repeats (TTAGGG) complexed with proteins[1,2] with estimated lengths of 5-15 kb in humans[3]. Their main function is to protect chromosomes from incomplete replication, nuclease degradation, and end-to-end fusion during replication[3]. During DNA replication, telomeric DNA shortens progressively, mainly due to the end-replication problem, that is, the inability of the DNA replication machinery to fully replicate DNA ends[2,3]. Telomerase contains a template region that is complementary to the telomeric DNA repeat (TTAGGG), to counteract the continuous degradation of telomeres by adding the telomeric DNA repeats to the 3’-ends of chromosomes[2,3]
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