Telomere length in poor-risk chronic lymphocytic leukemia: associations with disease characteristics and outcome

AbstractTelomere length in chronic lymphocytic leukemia(CLL) is described as an independent prognostic factor basedlargely on previously untreated patients from chemotherapy based trials. Here, we studied telomerelength associations in high-risk, relapsed/refractory CLL treated with alemtuzumabin the CLL2O study (n = 110) of German and French CLL study groups. Telomerelength (median 3.28 kb, range 2.52–7.24 kb) was relatively short, since 84.4% of patients had 17p- which is generally associated with short telomeres. Median telomerelength was used for dichotomization into short and long telomeresubgroups. Telomerelength was associated with s-TK (p = .025) and TP53 mutations (p = .050) in untreated patients, while no association with clinical/biological characteristics was observed in relapsed/refractory CLL. Short telomereshad significant association with shorter PFS (p = .018) only in refractory CLL. Presence of short telomeres, loss of genes maintaining genomic integrity (SMC5) and increased inc...