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Objective: Treatment of differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) includes suppression of TSH with levothyroxine therapy, which may negatively influence bone mineral density (BMD), but the effects are controversial. We aimed to evaluate the relationship between TSH-suppressive therapy and BMD in postmenopausal women with DTC. Methodology: Cross-sectional study that assessed BMD by densitometry and risk factors for decreased BMD in 109 postmenopausal women under TSH-suppressive therapy for DTC, compared to an age-matched euthyroid women control group. Conditions that might have affected BMD were exclusion criteria. Results: Patients were 58.4 ± 8.3 years-old, mean serum TSH was 0.21 ± 0.28µIU/ml. In BMD evaluation, T-scores were –1.09 ± 1.43 SD (lumbar spine) and –0.12 ± 1.18 SD (total femur). No significant differences were found between lumbar or femoral T-scores of patients and control group. Multivariate logistic regression analysis evidenced that low BMI and low mean TSH levels (assessed in the year of BMD measurement) were factors significantly related to lower lumbar and spinal BMD. Conclusion: Although low TSH levels and low BMI were correlated with lower BMD, it was not observed an increased prevalence of osteopenia or osteoporosis in this cohort of post-menopausal women under levothyroxine treatment for DTC, when compared to age-matched control women. Nevertheless, such risk factors should be carefully observed in individual patients at high risk of decrease in BMD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVE The thyroid suppression test is still used in some centres as an adjunt in the diagnosis of autonomous functioning thyroid nodules. With the purpose of minimizing the disadvantages of the original T3 suppression test, we have evaluated the efficacy of a method using l-thyroxine as TSH suppression agent and [99 mTc] pertechnetate as radiopharmaceutical. DESIGN Open nonrandomized prospective study MATERIALS AND METHODS A control group of 15 normal volunteers (11 males, 4 females; 21–35 years, mean 26.4 years) and a patient group of 20 patients (18 females, 2 males; 27–83 years, mean 53.6 years) divided into 4 subgroups, were studied: 7 patients with autonomous functioning nontoxic nodules, 3 with autonomous functioning toxic nodules, 7 with Graves disease and 3 with nonautoimmune diffuse toxic goitre. Baseline thyroid uptake and imaging were begun 20 minutes after an intravenous injection of 370 MBq (10 mCi) of [99 mTc] pertechnetate. This was followed by a single daily intake of 2 μg/kg of l-thyroxine, for 10 days. Thyroid imaging and uptake were then repeated. RESULTS In the control group [99 mTc] pertechnetate uptake after l-thyroxine suppression had a mean reduction of 75.8 ± 7.69% (58–87%) in comparison to the baseline level. All subjects were euthyroid by clinical and laboratory criteria and none complained of side-effects, despite significant suppression of TSH levels. In the patient group, thyroid uptake after suppression decreased in 10 patients (maximum reduction 39%), was unchanged in 2 patients and increased in the remaining 8 patients. CONCLUSION The method described was efficient for demonstration of autonomous thyroid tissue, since none of the patients showed significant reduction of thyroid uptake after l-thyroxine suppression compared with the control group. This test was as effective as the original T3 suppression test, but more convenient to the patient: no... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: TENIS syndrome is characterized by reduced expression of sodium-iodine symporter, rising serum thyroglobulin (Tg) levels, and negative whole-body 131 I scans. In such patients, somatostatin receptor imaging with 68 Ga-DOTATATE PET/CT (somatostatin receptor [SSR] PET/CT) and 18 F-FDG PET/CT (FDG PET/CT) can identify metastases and were compared under 2 conditions: elevated (eTSH) and suppressed (sTSH) TSH serum levels. Potential candidates for peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRNT) were identified in 15 patients prospectively enrolled. All patients underwent 4 examinations. Images were blindly evaluated for differences in SUV max values and lesion detectability. Reference standard consisted of neck ultrasound, CT, MRI, PET/CT, biopsy, and follow-up. Three patients were received PRRNT., Results: sTSH SSR PET/CT detected a greater number of cervical ( P = 0.0253 and P = 0.0176) and distant LNs ( P = 0.0253 and P = 0.0391) when compared with sTSH FDG PET/CT, respectively, in a per-patient and on a per-lesion based analysis. Likewise, eTSH SSR PET/CT detected a greater number of patients with local recurrences ( P = 0.0455) and distant LN metastases ( P = 0.0143). Per-lesion analysis revealed greater number of cervical and distant LNs ( P = 0.0337 and P = 0.0039, respectively) when compared with eTSH FDG PET/CT. There was no difference in detection of distant metastases by both tracers for lung and bone metastases (κ = 1). Both skeletal and pulmonary lesions were also detected by conventional CT part of FDG or DOTATATE PET/CT scans. TSH stimulation had no additional value in a per-patient analysis for both FDG and DOTATATE PET scans (κ varying from 0.6087 to 1). However, TSH stimulation led to more lesion identifications in DOTATATE PET/CT; most of those metastases were not confirmed by the reference standard leading to a decrease in specificity (84% vs 74%). One of 3 patients submitted to 3 cycles of PRRNT presented with a visual partial response, a 20% reduction in quantitative analyses, and stable disease regarding Tg and TgAb levels., Conclusions: Patients with TENIS syndrome can be imaged with SSR PET/CT as well as FDG PET/CT with high overall accuracy regardless of TSH levels (86% to 92% and 92% to 85%, respectively, with eTSH and sTSH). SSR PET/CT detected a greater number of locoregional and distant LN metastases than FDG PET/CT with both sTSH and eTSH. One of 3 patients submitted to PRRNT presented a partial response to treatment. Our findings may impact in patient restaging, management, and theranostics strategies with radiolabeled somatostatin analogs., Competing Interests: Conflicts of interest and sources of funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sector. The authors declare no financial (or other) conflict of interest relating to Employment or Leadership Position, Consultant or Advisory, Stock Ownership, Honoraria, Expert Testimony, Patents, Royalties, Licenses, or other Remuneration. D.E.Z.-W. had a National Council of Technological and Scientific Development Scholarship (CNPq) (303068/2021-3), and L.S.A. had a CAPES-Print Funding for doctorate Scholarship (CAPES) (88887.716546/2022-00)., (Copyright © 2024 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Nonmedullary thyroid carcinoma, originating from thyroid epithelial cells, is the most frequent thyroid malignant neoplasia. Since 1955, there has been increasing evidence that this cancer may have a familial predisposition. It is now established that around 4.2% of all nonmedullary thyroid carcinomas occurs on the background of familial predisposition. These cases are often more aggressive, due to early onset, multifocality and a higher percentual of recurrences. An autossomal dominant inheritance pattern appears likely in most families, although the exact genes responsible for this syndrome have not yet been identified. Patients affected by this cancer should be treated with total thyroidectomy routinely and, in most cases, lymph node dissection, followed by iodine ablation and TSH suppressive therapy with levothyroxine. Some authors also recommend that first-degree relatives of patients with nonmedullary thyroid cancer (especially women) should be submitted to neck ultrasound for thyroid cancer screening, aiming early diagnosis for better treatment results.

Because most differentiated thyroid carcinomas have an excellent prognosis, some authors have claimed that these patients are suffering from over treatment. Grouping patient- and tumor-specific factors have been proposed for prognostic stratification, but no clinicopathologic staging was demonstrated to be useful at the present time. More recently, molecular genetic tools have been used to identify and understand how the primary tumor progresses and many molecular markers have been proposed in order to distinguish the subset of patients at risk of developing metastasis. Here we analyzed some of them, with emphasis on the expression of NIS, a determinant of prognosis since the functional integrity of the iodine transport is essential to assure an uptake of radioiodine high enough to detect and destroy any tumoral thyroid tissue. More recent observations on how some relevant molecular genetics aspects of thyroid cancer impact new potential therapeutic approaches are also discussed.

Susceptibility to chemical carcinogens plays an important role in the development of most cancers. Several polymorphisms of human drug-metabolizing enzymes influence this individual susceptibility. The genes that encode the isoenzymes of the glutathione s-transferase (GST) system present a polymorphic inheritance. The GST mu 1 (GSTM1) and GST theta 1 (GSTT1) genes have a null allele variant in which the entire gene is absent. The null genotype for both enzymes has been associated with many different types of tumors. To look for the influence of the inheritance pattern of these enzymes on thyroid cancer risk, we used a triplex PCR that included beta-globin gene as a DNA quality control to compare 300 normal individuals of our population to 116 goiter patients. There were 49 cases of benign and 67 cases of malignant nodules: 50 papillary and 17 follicular carcinomas. Comparison between thyroid tumor specimens and normal corresponding samples of 35 cancer patients demonstrated identical patterns, suggesting that the GST system is not involved in the process of follicular dedifferentiation. There was no statistical difference between the prevalence of the deleted alleles in the normal individuals and in the goiter patients. However, papillary carcinoma patients (10%) and follicular carcinoma patients (17%) presented a higher prevalence of the null genotype than the normal population individuals (5%; P < 0.05). We found a 2.6 increased risk of thyroid cancer in individuals with the GSTT1 and GSTM1 combined null inheritance, suggesting that this genotype may be associated with an increased susceptibility to thyroid cancer.