The Roles of Age, Comorbidity, and Telomere Length in Lung Cancer Treatment and Prognosis

The Roles of Age, Comorbidity, and Telomere Length in Lung Cancer Treatment and Prognosis

The investigators hypothesize that the age-adjusted telomere length in lung cancer patients before chemotherapy may be correlated to comorbidity status and predict outcome. The change of telomere length shortening after chemotherapy may relate to treatment side effect and treatment response.

Except chemotherapy, telomere shortening were also related to a variety of cellular stress, including hydrogen peroxide, UV, and x-irradiation, transforming growth factor-beta, overexpression of oncogenes such as Ha-Ras. The cellular stress induced telomere shortening and/or telomere dysfunction and promote accelerated senescence in normal and malignant cells. Oxidative stress, which presented in several chronic inflammatory diseases, such as atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease, and chronic obstructive airway disease, was also found to be correlated with telomere shortening.

Inclusion Criteria:

1. Patients who are newly diagnosed as lung cancer and prepared for scheduled chemotherapy.
2. The diagnosis is based on pathology via surgical specimen, or biopsy; or cytology via lung, lymph node aspiration or effusion study.

Exclusion criteria:

includes clinical diagnosis of lung cancer without pathology or cytology proving, combined with other type malignancy, and expected short survival time less than one month.