Telomere length, c-myc and mad-1 expression could represent prognosis markers of myelodysplastic syndrome

tTelomere dysfunction might generate genomic instability leading to the progression of myelodysplasticsyndromes (MDS) into acute myeloid leukemia (AML). We investigated telomere length (TL), telome-rase activity (TA) and hTERT, c-myc, mad1, and p53 expression in the bone marrow of patients withMDS (n = 109), AML (n = 47) and in controls (n = 24). TL was lower in MDS patients than in controls(p < 0.001) and higher in L-MDS (low, intermediate-1 IPSS, p < 0.01) respect H-MDS (high, intermediate-2IPSS, p < 0.01) patients. Mad-1 expression was higher in MDS patients than in controls (p < 0.01), c-mycexpression was highest in AML and in H-MDS patients. Our results show that the telomere dynamicsmight be useful for stratifying patients according to a risk scoring system.