Back to Program | 2010 Program and Abstracts Overview | 2010 Posters

Introduction: Accelerated biological ageing is a feature of a diverse range of pathologies, including cancer. Typically this is manifest as telomere attrition, which reflects increasing ‘miles on the clock’ and predisposes to earlier age of onset of disease and earlier mortality. This process is driven by oxidative damage and associated inflammatory processes.We have previously identified a dependent association between telomere length and fetuin A levels in end stage renal disease (ref1). Furthermore, we have demonstrated that colorectal cancer (CRC) patients exhibit accelerated telomere attrition: they have more ‘miles on the clock’. We therefore sought to investigate whether circulating fetuin A levels may also reflect biological age in CRC subjects. We investigated whether there was any relationship between fetuin A levels, telomere length and blood markers of inflammation.Methods: Telomere lengths were determined by Q-PCR (ref2) from peripheral blood leukocytes (PBL) derived from CRC patients. Fetuin A levels in plasma were measured by ELISA and correlated with common clinico-pathological characteristics, serum redox markers and markers of inflammation. Statistical analysis of data was performed using SPSS version 15.0.Results: We observed a significant association between subjects with short telomeres and low fetuin A levels (p<0.05). There was a significant positive correlation between fetuin A and plasma calcium (rho 0.410, p=0.016), iron (rho 0.432, p=0.017), and albumin (rho 0.443, p=0.01). There was a significant negative correlation between fetuin A and CRP (rho -0.416, p=0.016) and between fetuin A and IL-6 (rho -0.485, p=0.005).Conclusion: These data are in keeping with the hypothesis that CRC patients show accelerated biological ageing and that this is reflected in shorter telomeres in PBLs, diminished redox homeostasis capability and increased inflammation. Assessment of biological age in CRC may present novel targets for intervention and enhanced prognostic/predictive capability.References(1) Carrero et al Journal of Internal Medicine, 2007; 263: 302-312.(2) R Cawthon Nucleic Acids Research, 2002; 30(10): e47.