TERT and lung cancer: Besides, a recent meta-analysis on the GWAS revealed that the variants in TERT-CLPTM1L genes may affect cancer risk through a variety of different biological pathways, and telomere length is the only one of the related mechanisms (36), whereas in our study, strong evidence was given to seven SNPs (rs10069690, rs2242652, rs2736098, rs2736100, rs2853676, rs2853677, and rs2853691) in TERT. Four SNPs (rs2853677, rs2242652, rs2736098, and rs2736100) were related to the predisposition of lung cancer.