Table 3.

Blood and solid cancer studies examining the effect of cancer treatment on telomere length (N = 4)

Reference	Cancer type(s)	Study design	Cancer patient sample size	Age Range, y	Treatment type	Specimen	Telomere length method	Overall association
Adult
Diker-Cohen et al., 2013 (34)	Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, colon, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, lymphoma	Longitudinal	42	45–74	Chemo: varied based on cancer type	PBMC	Flow-FISH	Shorter telomere length with treatment†
Kronenwett et al., 1996 (49)	Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, multiple myeloma, breast cancer, rhabdomyosarcoma	Cross-sectional*	54	22–60	Chemo: varied based on cancer type; G-CSF	PB stem cells; mononuclear cells	TRF analysis	No association
Pediatric
Franco et al., 2003 (50)	Acute lymphocytic leukemia, Hodgkin lymphoma, Ewing’s sarcoma, hepatoblastoma, clear cell sarcoma, neuroblastoma, Wilms tumor, brainstem tumor, astrocytoma, severe aplastic anemia	Longitudinal	24	0.7–16	Chemo: varied based on cancer type, radiation, autologous stem cells	PBMC or bone marrow mononuclear cells and granulocytes	TRF analysis	Shorter PB telomere length with treatment, primarily among solid tumor patients and not hematological cancer patients
Engelhardt et al., 1998 (51)	Acute lymphocytic leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia, sarcoma, Wilms tumor, Hodgkin lymphoma, Central nervous system tumors, hepatoblastoma, germ cell	Longitudinal	25	1–15	Chemo: varied based on cancer type	PBMC and bone marrow mononuclear cells and granulocytes	TRF analysis	Shorter telomere length with treatment

^*No pretreatment sample measured for telomere length. FISH = fluorescence in situ hybridization; G-CSF = granulocyte colony-stimulating factor; PB = peripheral blood; PBMC = peripheral blood mononuclear cells; TRF = terminal restriction fragment.

^†Result statistically significant.