Endocrine Abstracts

In April 1986, the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant resulted in widespread radioactive contamination in southern Belarus, northern Ukraine and southern Russia. The main radiation dose was to the thyroid and came from exposure to I131 from drinking contaminated milk. A substantial increase in thyroid cancer incidence in children was observed as early as 5 years after the accident. The first report in 1992 described 114 cases of thyroid cancer in childre...

Thyroid carcinoma is collectively the most common of the endocrine cancers and overall has a good prognosis if diagnosed early. However, the molecular events underlying development of the two most common types, follicular (FTC) and papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), is not well understood. Furthermore, pre-operative distinction between FTC and benign follicular adenomas (FA) by fine-needle aspiration remains a challenge. Microarray expression analysis is a powerful tool that m...

Thyroid cancer accounts for ca. 90% of all endocrine tumours and ca. 60% of endocrine cancer deaths, with an increasing incidence of the disease worldwide. Disease recurrence and metastasis occur in up to 20% of patients. Many of the tumour-initiating events of thyroid cancer have already been identified. Overexpression of Galectin-3 and telomerase, point mutations in RAS and BRAF, rearrangements of the PAX8-PPAR gamma and RET genes have all been implicated in thyroid tumour i...