No association between telomere length and osteonecrosis of the femoral head

BACKGROUND: Telemore length (TL) shortening has been found in many diseases. However, clinical characteristics of TL shortening in osteonecrosis of the femoral head (ONFH) has not been investigated. Therefore, we studied whether TL changes have clinicopathological values in ONFH. METHODS: The TL in the synovial tissues of 36 ONFH and 127 control patients (femoral neck fracture) was examined by quantitative real-time PCR as relative length, Δ Ct value. In addition, the correlation between TL and clinical features of ONFH and controls was analyzed. RESULTS: The average TL in the femoral tissues was 1.46 ± 3.12 (standard deviation). The average TL in the ONFH and control tissues was 1.92 ± 4.11 and 1.34 ± 2.78, respectively, however, the difference was absent (p = 0.324). Furthermore, a shorter TL was tended to be associated with erythrocyte sedimentation rate (100% vs. 61.5%, p = 0.073); however, the association was not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we demonstrated that there is no association between the TL and clinicopathologic characteristics of ONFH patients. However, further studies considering the genetic factors are needed to be performed.