TERT and cancer: Previous studies have demonstrated that rs10069690 (C>T) polymorphism in the TERT is associated with susceptibility to multiple types of cancer, such as breast cancer (Bojesen et al., 2013; Haiman et al., 2011; Huo et al., 2016; Michailidou et al., 2015, 2017), ovarian cancer (Bojesen et al., 2013; Earp et al., 2016; Kuchenbaecker et al., 2015; Lee et al., 2016; Phelan et al., 2017), lung cancer (Landi et al., 2009; Ye et al., 2017), and thyroid cancer (Gong et al., 2016; Gudmundsson et al., 2017).