Endocrine Abstracts

Background: One of the major limits of gene therapy with sodium iodide symporter (NIS), which enables cells to be subjected to radioiodine therapy, is that NIS transfected cells rapidly release the intracellular iodine.Materials and methods: We transfected two human anaplastic (FRO) and medullary (TT) thyroid cancer derived cell lines, unable to take up iodine, with human NIS cDNA. The possibility of increasing the iodine retention time by treating cells...

We previously found that two cell lines (ARO and FRO) derived from anaplastic thyroid cancer and one (TT) deriving from medullary thyroid cancer did not respond to the retinoic acid (RA) treatment. We supposed that it was related to the lack of the RA receptor RAR beta mRNA expression. It has been suggested that the promoter methylation was one possible cause of loss of RAR beta expression.We analyzed the methylation status of RAR beta promoter in ARO, F...

Introduction: The surgical approach is the first line treatment for patients with an indeterminate nodule, both without and with nuclear atypia (TIR3A and TIR3B, respectively, as defined by Italian Consensus for thyroid cytology). However, there are no prospective studies about the feasibility of active surveillance in patients with indeterminate thyroid nodules.Methods: Eighty-six consecutive patients who decided to undergo active surveillance for at le...

Introduction: Total thyroidectomy (TT) plus central neck compartment (CC) lymphnode dissection is still the recommended initial gold standard treatment for medullary thyroid cancer (MTC), even in the absence of a pre-surgical positive neck US evidence of lymphnode metastases. Considering the risk of surgical complications of this prophylactic surgery and the low rate of histologic finding of CC lymphnode metastases, a more tailored lymphnode’ surgery should be proposed. A...

Introduction: The association between thyroid cancer and thyrotoxicosis is rare and, in particular, autonomous hyperfunctioning metastasis of differentiated thyroid cancer (TC) are seldom described, with a prevalence of 0.71%. Althought most hyperfunctioning metastasis are derived from follicular thyroid cancer (FTC), metastasis from papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) have been also reported. Bone metastasis account for the majority of cases. Hyperfunctioning TC metastasis have be...

Introduction: Despite its neuroendocrine origin, only recently an international study group proposed a dedicated grading system (IMTCGS) for medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC). IMTCGS is an independent and powerful tool able to predict disease specific survival (DSS) as well as distant metastasis-free (DMFS) and locoregional recurrence-free survivals (LRFS), regardless of other risk factors, including staging.Objectives: To evaluate the performance of IMT...

Background: Distant metastases at diagnosis is the worst prognostic factor for disease specific survival (DSS) in sporadic medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC). Also, lymph node metastases are negative prognostic factors both for DSS and recurrence free survival (RFS). The question whether central (N1a) and latero-cervical compartment lymph nodes metastasis (N1b), separately evaluated, can have a different impact on DSS and RFS remains to be clarified.Patie...

Introduction: RET gene is responsible for various human cancers and is mutated and hyperactivated in nearly 100% of familial (germline mutation) and in about 60% of sporadic (somatic mutation) MTC cases. Moreover, RET gene play a role in several physiologic and pathologic conditions. Very recently, the hyperfunction of RET was found to be a key process in weight loss. The hypothesis is that in a peculiar population in which RET gene is mutated and constitutively activated from...

Introduction: The majority of patients with radioiodine-refractory thyroid carcinoma (RAIR-TC) have an indolent disease and require active surveillance (AS) only, while those with progression of the disease (PD) may benefit from local treatment (LT) or systemic therapy with tyrosine-kinase inhibitors (TKI). In the literature, no data about the real impact of LTs in avoiding/delaying systemic treatment in RAIR-TC patients are present.Objective: This study...

Background: Genotype-phenotype correlations between various RET mutations and clinical manifestations of MEN 2 syndrome are well established. A discussion is still open if the FMTC phenotype really exists or if it is just a MEN2A variant. Aim of this study was to verify if the phenotype corresponding to the V804M germline mutation is restricted to FMTC.Methods: During the last 25 years, we have identified 200 families with a hereditary form of M...