Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Thyroid cancer is the most frequent endocrine malignancy, with >7000 cases diagnosed in central Europe every year. Recently, ALK/EML4 translocations have been reported in single cases in anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC). Little is known about the frequency of ALK alterations in poorly differentiated thyroid cancer (PTC). Our aim was to investigate the frequency of ALK alterations in patients with advanced thyroid carcinomas.Material and me...

Introduction: Constitution of new blood vessels is crucial for cancer self-maintenance and progression. Neo-angiogenesis may be affected from hereditary traits, namely the presence of SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) of genes involved in its regulation. VEGF-A represents the main regulator of angiogenesis. Germline SNPs of the VEGF-A gene have been associated to outcome of several cancers, but no data exist about differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC).<p class="abstext"...

Antiproliferative actions of 1,25(OH)2D3 (1,25D), the active form of Vitamin D, are reported in various types of cancer, whereas little is known about the underlying molecular mechanism. Interestingly, in non thyroid-cancer cells, stimulation with 1,25D has been shown to affect cell proliferation in a Sirtuin 1 (Sirt1) dependent manner. Sirtuin histon deacetylases are key factors in cell metabolism recently found to be overexpressed in different carcinoma...

Background: The role of circulating Galectin-3 as a potential biomarker of malignancy in thyroid disease remains inconclusive. In a previous pilot study we reported a significant difference between serum Gal-3 levels in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) patients and those with benign pathology, but no association with tumor aggressiveness.Aim: We measured serum Gal-3 levels in a larger series of patients submitted to thyroidectomy, in order to assess its...

Background: We aimed to evaluate malignancy rate in thyroid nodules ≥4 cm and determine false negativity of fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) in these nodules.Methods: Patients who underwent thyroidectomy between January 2007 and December 2014 in our institution were reviewed. Demographical and clinical data and preoperative ultrasonography (US) findings were obtained from the medical records. The nodules in these patients were grouped as &#8805...

Introduction: Immunohistochemistry (ihc) in thyroid pathology is often recruited for differentiating between challenging benign and malignant tumors. There is no single antibody that can render definitive diagnosis. Most of the recently identified ihc markers have never been assimilated into daily clinical practice due to their low reproducibility and other associated limitations. Trop-2 ihc was recently reported as a useful tool for identifying papillary thyroid carcinoma (pt...

Thyroid nodules are very common and benign in most cases. Thus, malignancy detection avoiding overtreatment is a challenge. Nodule evaluation mainly supports on US and fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC). The Bethesda classification (BC) for reporting thyroid cytopathology is now currently used for the interpretation of results but it does not enable classifying 30% of samples.The objective was to identify, by transcriptome analysis, a molecular signa...

Background: Shear wave elastography (SWE) is an emerging technique that can be used to evaluate malignancy in many organs. The aim of this study was to address the role of elasticity indices as a possible predictive marker for detecting papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) and quantitative assessment of SWE for differential diagnosis of benign and malignant thyroid nodules.Methods: One hundred and nineteen patients with thyroid nodules undergoing SWE before...

Introduction: Mutations in the ret gene are responsible for the transmission of inherited medullary thyroid cancer (MTC). In recent years a high prevalence of the ‘rare’ exon 8 mutation (G533C) has been found in patients with inherited MTC in Greece. The aim of this study was to record with more detail the place of origin of these families in the country.Design: We analysed the details of 44 patients belonging to 22 families who were c...

Thyroglobulin (Tg) is a highly sensitive tumor marker of differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC). To optimize the sensitivity, guidelines recommend Tg measurement after stimulation with recombinant TSH (rh-TSH) 6–12 months after radio remnant ablation (RRA). Based on recent evidence in Literature, it is possible to avoid the measurement of Tg after stimulation with rh-TSH (S-Tg) in presence of undetectable values of basal Tg (B-Tg) if high functional sensitivity (0.1 ng/ml) m...