Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) is a neuroendocrine thyroidal cancer. World Health Organization recognizes a grading system for almost all neuroendocrine tumors; however, a shared grading system for MTC is still lacking. We performed a clinical and pathological review of 257 MTCs to evaluate which histologic features have an impact on the disease specific survival and to propose a new grading system.Method: We retrospectively reviewed cli...

Background: Vandetanib and Cabozantinib are the only two multitarget tyrosine kinase inhibitors approved for the management of metastatic and progressive medullary thyroid cancer. (MTC) Despite their efficacy in terms of progression free survival prolongation and overall response rate, the drug-related toxicity is still a clinical problem, impairing patient’s quality of life and the compliance to the treatment. We retrospectively evaluate the adverse events (AEs) occurred...

Background: Serum calcitonin (CT) is a very sensitive test for the diagnosis of medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC). However, its routine dosage in patients with nodular thyroid disease is not recommended by all scientific societies. In addition, to optimize costs, it is only suggested in the case of suspicious nodules on ultrasound, indeterminate nodules at cytology or nodular goiter before surgery. The aim of the study is to evaluate the serum CT in a series of consecutive MTC...

Objectives: Vandetanib (V) is an important drug in the metastatic medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) treatment. The objective of this study was to evaluate the presence of predictors of V response, in short and long period, in locally advanced or metastatic MTC patients (pts).Methods: Seventy-nine locally advanced or metastatic MTC pts with progressive or symptomatic disease, referred to our Center between 2007 and 2018 and already treated surgically and wit...

Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 (MEN 2) is characterized by the presence of medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) and other benign pathologies. RET mutations are responsible of this disease and their screening is a very sensitive tool for the identification of gene carriers (GC).Aim of this study was to verify the relevance of the basal and pentagastrin (Pg) stimulated serum calcitonin (CT) in the decision to perform TT in GC. We reviewed data of 65 GC foun...

Serum CT is the most specific marker of Medullary Thyroid carcinoma (MTC). Although Pg test is the most frequently used to induce CT secretion, the poor availability of Pg makes it necessary to look for different agents. Aim of this work was to compare the induction of CT secretion following 2 different stimuli in the same patient. We studied 25 patients (14 females, 11 males; mean age 50±15 yrs; range 12–77 yrs). All patients were subjected to both tests by injectio...

Introduction: MTC is a rare neuroendocrine tumor arising from thyroid parafollicular cells. After initial treatment, patients should be divided according to their clinical status in cured, biochemical persistence (BIO) and structural persistence (STR) of the disease. Concerning BIO patients less is known about the structural disease appearance rate and the time elapsed between the first evaluation after surgery and the appearance of structural disease.Me...

Aims: Surgery is the only curative treatment for medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) patients and the gold standard practice is still represented by total thyroidectomy and prophylactic central neck compartment lymphnode dissection. As it happened for differentiated thyroid cancer, in the last years some authors proposed less aggressive and extent surgical modality as hemithyroidectomy and ipsilateral neck compartment dissection in unilateral and solitary sporadic MTC cases. Few st...

Background: CCH and serum hypercalcitoninemia (iperCT) can be found in benign thyroid diseases such as thyroiditis and in some cases of papillary (PTC) or follicular (FTC) thyroid microcarcinomas. The question of whether the association with these latter is related to the malignancy of the nodule is still unclear.Aim of the study: To evaluate the difference in the CCH prevalence, at histology, in a series of benign (BTN) and malignant (PTC/FTC) thyroid n...

Several studies have identified a relationship between oncogene activation and dedifferentiation of PTC. Mutations of RAS, RET/PTC and BRAF modulate the expression of thyroid genes. An impaired NIS expression has been demonstrated in PTCs harboring the BRAFV600E mutation.Aim of this study was to analyze BRAF and RET/PTC1-3 alterations and their influence on the expression of thyroid differentiation genes. Seventy-one PTC samples were studied. Quantitative analysis o...