The effect of financial reports’ auality on Ffrm’s rerformance

We analyse whether the quality of firms’ Financial Reports (FRQ) produces any effect on their performance. Bradshaw et al. (2004) and Gelos and Wei (2005) call attention to the fact that the international capital movements is affected by FRQ. Following Schipper and Vicent (2003) we use the abnormal accruals to access earnings quality. For seventeen European countries, we found evidence that FRQ produces a positive impact on firm’s performance. This finding indicates that mangers are not opportunists and tends to make decisions to defend the firm’s best interests. This result is robust since it does not depend on the accounting firms’ performance proxy (ROA/ROE). In addition, it is also consistent when we use data in time series and in cross-sectional and when we estimate regression with lagged or the current year information about abnormal accruals.

Frequency of TERT promoter mutations in human cancers

Reactivation of telomerase has been implicated in human tumorigenesis, but the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here we report the presence of recurrent somatic mutations in the TERT promoter in cancers of the central nervous system (43%), bladder (59%), thyroid (follicular cell-derived, 10%) and skin (melanoma, 29%). In thyroid cancers, the presence of TERT promoter mutations (when occurring together with BRAF mutations) is significantly associated with higher TERT mRNA expression, and in glioblastoma we find a trend for increased telomerase expression in cases harbouring TERT promoter mutations. Both in thyroid cancers and glioblastoma, TERT promoter mutations are significantly associated with older age of the patients. Our results show that TERT promoter mutations are relatively frequent in specific types of human cancers, where they lead to enhanced expression of telomerase.

Low frequency of TERT promoter mutations in gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs)

Somatic mutations in the promoter region of telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) gene, mainly at positions c.-124 and c.-146 bp, are frequent in several human cancers; yet its presence in gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) has not been reported to date. Herein, we searched for the presence and clinicopathological association of TERT promoter mutations in genomic DNA from 130 bona fide GISTs. We found TERT promoter mutations in 3.8% (5/130) of GISTs. The c.-124C>T mutation was the most common event, present in 2.3% (3/130), and the c.-146C>T mutation in 1.5% (2/130) of GISTs. No significant association was observed between TERT promoter mutation and patient's clinicopathological features. The present study establishes the low frequency (4%) of TERT promoter mutations in GISTs. Further studies are required to confirm our findings and to elucidate the hypothetical biological and clinical impact of TERT promoter mutation in GIST pathogenesis.