Fig. 1

Telomere length correlated with the expression of RTEL1 predicated worse progression of glioma patients. The telomere length (A) and mRNA expression (B) was analyzed by qRT-PCR in gliomas with 18 S rRNA as the normalized controls (T; n = 127) and non-glioma control tissues (NT; n = 50). 2^−ΔΔCt and two-tailed t-test was used to analyze the Statistical differences. (C) The association of telomere length with expression of RTEL1 in glioma tissues was assessed by linear regression analysis. R = 0.248; p < 0.001. By using Kaplan–Meier and Univariate Cox regression, long RTL caused a poorer overall survival than short RTL in all patients (n = 330) (D) and in the patients with grade I-II gliomas (n = 174) (E) but not in the patients with grade III-IV gliomas (n = 156) (F). (G) High expression of RTEL1 caused a poorer overall survival in TERT wild-type patients (n = 238). Data were expressed as mean ± SD. ** p < 0.01