Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the most common type of differentiated thyroid cancer of all cases of thyroid cancer. Fine-needle biopsy by ultrasonography is still the main diagnostic method of PTC, but there is a technical limitation. That’s why, a minimally invasive diagnostic test that can accurately diagnose the onset of the disease is the subject of research.

Our objective: We aimed to explore the concentration levels of ACTB in PTC patients, healthy controls (HC) plasma samples and to compare with clinicopathological factors.

Methods: Studyincluded 154 patients treated at Hospital of Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas clinics 2020 - 2021: 68 patients with a histologically confirmed diagnosis of PTC and 86 HC. The concentration of ACTB was measured by qPCR in plasma samples. 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 in PTC group and 45.30 ± 12.07 years in HC (P>0.05). In the PTC group, there were 8 male patients (11.8%) and 60 female patients (88.2%), while in the HC: 65 (75.6%) female and 21 (24.4 %) male patients (P>0.05). The concentration of ACTB was significantly higher in the PTC patients compared to HC (1005.97 vs 623.12 ng/ml, P=0.047). We observed that ACTB concentration were significantly higher in PTC with greater tumor size (>2 cm) compared to lower (≤2 cm) tumor size (P=0.005). The total tumor size was calculated as the sum of the diameters of all tumors in PTC multifocal cases. A weak positive correlation between the concentration of ACTB with the total size of PTC tumors was found (P=0.012, r=0.304). However, there was no correlation between lymphovascular invasion, lymph node metastasis and other clinicopathological features.

Conclusion: This analysis included comparison of the ACTB concentration associations between PTC patients, HC groups and clinicopathologic factors. We found that plasma concentration of ACTB was significantly higher in patients with greater tumor size. Our study indicated that ACTB concentration changes may be used as parameter in differentiating PTC patients from HC. But further studies are also warranted to expand upon our findings.