Telomere shortening has been supposed to be implicated in both aging and various human diseases especially carcinogenesis process. This phenomenon can lead to a chromosomal instability, contributing to a cell immortalization and tumor induction. In our study, we analyzed the role of telomere shortening in cancer progression, in Tunisian patients with digestive cancer. We measured the absolute telomere length in tumoral vs healthy adjacent tissues of each patient by using a q-RT PCR method and we investigated the relationship between telomere length and various sociodemographic and clinical parameters such as age, sex, tumor stage. In this pathological situation, we observed that, starting from 60 years of age, the telomere length increases in healthy mucosa and that in both healthy and cancer tissues, patients under 60 years have shorter telomeres, suggesting the telomere lengthening becomes more active with age. Finally, a positive correlation between normal and cancer tissues in both non-metastatic and metastatic stages, indicates telomere length in cancer tissue depends essentially on tumor stages. Our data allow us to suggest that telomere length depends on sex and age in healthy tissue while shortening and lengthening fluctuates considerably according to the tumor stage.

端粒缩短被认为与衰老和各种人类疾病特别是致癌过程有关。这种现象会导致染色体不稳定，导致细胞永生化和肿瘤诱导。在我们的研究中，我们分析了突尼斯消化道癌症患者端粒缩短在癌症进展中的作用。我们测量了肿瘤相对于端粒的绝对端粒长度使用q-RT PCR方法对每位患者的健康相邻组织进行研究，我们研究了端粒长度与各种社会人口统计学和临床​​参数（例如年龄，性别，肿瘤分期）之间的关系。在这种病理情况下，我们观察到，从60岁开始，健康黏膜的端粒长度增加，而在健康和癌症组织中，低于60岁的患者端粒较短，这表明端粒的延长会随着年龄的增长而变得活跃。最后，正常组织和癌组织在非转移和转移阶段均呈正相关，表明癌组织中的端粒长度基本上取决于肿瘤的阶段。