Endocrine Abstracts

Aim: Differentiated thyroid carcinomas (DTC) composes 95% of all thyroid malignancies originating from thyroid follicular epithelial cells. DTC expresses TSH receptors so long time TSH stimulation may cause cancer occurrence or malignancy progression. So we aimed to assess the role of TSH levels in predicting thyroid cancer stage or aggressiveness.

Methods: We retsopectively searched thyroid cancer patients fort he last 10 years in our instution. Totally 329 patients record were eligible for the study. TSH levels and disease stage, age and sex were evaluated.

Results: 322 (97.9%) were papillary thyroid carcinomas and 7 (2.1%) were follicular carcinomas 261 79.3(%) were females, 68 (20.7%) were males. Median age was 45 (17–76) years old. Among the patients; 273 (83.0%) had stage 1 disease, 22 (6.7%) had stage 2 disease, 11 had (3,3%) stage 3 disease and 23 (7.0%) had stage 4 disease. Median TSH level was 1.34 (0.01–9.97) mIU/ml. Serum TSH levels were different when compared stage 1 and 4 patients (P=0.004). But there was no significant difference between other stages. Additionally, subjects with lymph node at diagnosis had higher TSH levels according to patients who had not (P=0.0001).

Conclusion: Higher TSH levels were observed in patients with lymph node metastasis at the diagnosis and there was statistically higher TSH levels in stage 4 patients compared to stage 1 patients. But this relation was not seen in other stages. Further studies with larger number of patients could show the relation with TSH levels and thyroid cancer aggressiveness.