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: CV-PTC is often indolent with excellent long-term response, while TCV-PTC (≥50% of tall cells) have aggressive features and worse clinical behavior. Less is known about the clinical behavior of CV-PTC with tall cells <50% (TC/CV-PTC) that, so far, is considered as low risk tumor.Aim: To evaluate the histological presentation of CV-PTC, TC/CV-PTC, TCV-PTC and their clinical behavior after 6 years of follow up.M...

Introduction: Virtually all familial cases of Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma (MTC) have a RET germline mutation. Subjects harboring RET germline mutation without unaware of their condition are defined gene carriers (GC). Thyroid surgery timing is decided upon RET mutation and calcitonin levels (both basal, bCT, and stimulated, sCT). However, bCT and sCT thresholds for planning thyroid surgery have not been established, yet.Methods...

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...

Genetic intratumor heterogeneity has been recently demonstrated in some solid human cancers and a few years ago RET mutated and not mutated cells were described in medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC). Nobody reported the presence of two different RET mutations.Aim of our study was to investigate the RET somatic mutation profile in primary MTC (pMTC) and in the corresponding metastatic tissues (mets).We studied pMTC and mets of 22 MTC...

The reported prevalence of RET somatic mutations in sporadic MTC is about 40–50% and the most frequent somatic mutation is Met918Thr in exon 16. MTC harboring a somatic RET mutation have been demonstrated to have a more advanced stage at diagnosis and a worse outcome. Although RET mutations are believed to be driving events in the MTC tumorigenesis only the finding of somatic mutations in microMTC can confirm this hypothesis.Aim of the present work ...

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...

Aim of the study was to evaluate whether clinical parameters and echographic patterns may be predictive of malignancy in thyroid nodules with a cytological diagnosis of follicular (FOL) and H?rthle cell (HC) neoplasia. The study included 495 patients (388 F: mean age 45±14 yr; 107 M: mean age 46±14 yr) with FOL (n=418) and CH (n=77) nodules, ‘cold’ at scintiscan and undergone to thyroidectomy. Clinical parameters considered were: sex, age, goi...

Aim of the study was to establish the diagnostic value of nuclear atypia thyroid nodules with cytological diagnosis of follicular (FOL) and Hv¨rthle cell (HC) neoplasia. 1039/23.313 fine needle aspiration (FNA) performed in January 2002 June 2005 in the Department of Endocrinology, University of Pisa had cytological diagnosis of FOL e CH. FNA was performed under echo guidance, using 23 gauge needle attached to 10 mL syringe. The material was air-dryed and stained with Pap...

Mutations in the RET proto-oncogene are responsible for multiple endocrine neoplasia type II. Somatic RET mutations were described in 50% of medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC). We describe here a novel germline mutation of the RET gene detected in an apparentely sporadic MTC.The index case was a 67 years old patient who arrived at our observation for a bilateral laterocervical linfoadenopathy. The patient was clinically evaluated for thyroid function and ...