Thyrotrophin receptor antibody is not associated with thyroid cancer in patients with toxic nodular and multinodular goiter

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Increased thyrotrophin receptor antibody (TRAb) was associated with thyroid cancer risk and aggressivity in patients with Graves disease. This relation was not investigated in patients with toxic nodular goiter (TNG) and toxic multinodular goiter (TMNG). We aimed to evaluate association between TRAb and thyroid cancer in patients with TNG and TMNG. METHODS: Patients who underwent thyroidectomy with a preoperative diagnosis of TNG and TMNG were reviewed retrospectively. Among 370 patients, TRAb was available in 191 TMNG and 30 TNG patients. RESULTS: TRAb was positive in 24 (10.86%) of 221 patients with TNG/TMNG. Histopathological result was malignant in 71 (32.13%) and benign in 150 (67.87%) patients. TRAb was positive in 7 (9.86%) of 71 malignant and 17 (11.33%) of 150 benign patients (p=0.742). Age, sex, serum thyrotrophin, free triiodothyronine, free thyroxine, anti-thyroid peroxidase and anti-thyroglobulin positivity, and histological tumor type did not differ between patients with positive and negative TRAb (p=0.393, p=0.401, p=0.403, p=0.903, p=0.877, p=0.788, p=0.540, and p=0.357, respectively). There was papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) in 7 (29.17%) patients with positive TRAb and 57 (28.93%) patients with negative TRAb (p=0.357). The variant of PTC was classical in 5 (71.43%) patients with positive and 50 (87.72%) patients with negative TRAb (p=0.242). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: In this study, we showed that TRAb positivity did not increase the risk of malignancy in patients with TNG/TMNG.

Keywords

• thyrotrophin receptor antibody
• toxic nodular goiter
• toxic multinodular goiter
• thyroid cancer