Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the most common thyroid cancer type. It carries a good prognosis. However, approximately ten percent of cases may present with metastatic disease at initial presentation. Fine needle aspiration biopsy cytology is still the gold standard for diagnosing PTC, but there is a technical limitation. That’s why minimally invasive diagnostic test is the subject of research in nowadays.

Our objective: We aimed to explore the TSHR methylation level in PTC patient’s plasma samples and to compare with clinicopathological factors.

Methods: Study included 68 patients with a histologically confirmed diagnosis of PTC treated at Hospital of Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas clinics 2020 - 2021. Peripheral blood samples were collected from patients. DNA methylation level changes of TSHR were analyzed by quantitative methylation-sensitive polymerase chain reaction. The total tumor size was calculated as the sum of the diameters of all tumors in PTC multifocal cases. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 22.0 software (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). The results were considered statistically significant at P< 0.05.

Results: Average age at diagnosis was 48.19 ± 14.9 years, there were 8 male patients (11.8%) and 60 female patients (88.2%). We observed that TSHR concentration were significantly higher in PTC with greater tumor size (>2 cm) compared to lower (≤2 cm) tumor size (P< 0.001), lymph node metastasis (P=0.01), lymphovascular invasion (P=0.02), multifocality (P=0.013). A weak positive correlation between the concentration of TSHR with the total size of PTC tumors was found (P=0.09, r=0.315). However, there was no correlation between demographic characteristics and histopathological subtypes of PTC.

Conclusion: This study analyzed associations between TSHR promoter methylation level and PTC clinicopathologic features. Our results indicate that TSHR promoter methylation may be useful parameter in assessing disease progression. Further studies are also warranted to expand upon our findings.