The Role of VEGF in the Development of Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma in
Patients with Lymphocytic Thyroiditis
Abstract
Objective: Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) plays a pivotal
role in the pathogenesis of autoimmune chronic inflammatory conditions
and papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). Design: We hypothesized that, as
VEGF expression is increased both in PTC and in lymphocytic thyroiditis
(LT), it may stimulate the development of PTC in patients with LT. To
evaluate this, we examined both tumor and adjacent non-tumoral tissues
of PTC patients with and without LT. Methods: A total of 50 patients
with PTC (52.50±7.41 years) and 17 patients with nodular goiter (NG)
(50.47±10.38 years) were included in the study. According to the
presence of LT, patients with PTC were further divided into two groups.
Immunohistochemical analyses of VEGF were conducted in all patients and
for PTC patients, both tumor tissue and adjacent non-tumoral tissue were
evaluated. Results: The scores for intensity of staining and percentage
of labeled thyrocytes for VEGF were found to be significantly higher in
the PTC patients than in the NG patients (p<0.001,
p<0.001, respectively). The tumor tissue revealed similar
scores for PTC patients with LT and without LT. However, the scores in
adjacent non-tumoral tissue were higher in PTC patients with LT than in
patients without LT (p=0.004, p=0.01, respectively). Conclusions: To the
best of our knowledge, our results are the first to demonstrate that the
expression of VEGF in adjacent non-tumoral tissue were higher in PTC
patients with LT than in those without, which shows a possible role of
VEGF expression in the progression of PTC in the presence of LT.