Retrospective analysis of TGF-β 1 expression in patients with thyroidectomy

To investigate the relationship between the expression of transforming growth factor β1 (TGF-β1) and thyroid lesions by retrospective analysis in patients with thyroidectomy.

Immunohistochemical analyses of TGF-β1 were performed with 120 archived formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded thyroid resection tissue samples that included 60 cases of thyroid cancers (papillary thyroid carcinoma, follicular thyroid carcinoma), 14 cases of nodular goiter (NG), 16 cases of thyroid adenoma, 15 cases of Graves disease, 15 cases of Hashimoto's thyroiditis.

The pathological analysis of resection thyroid showed a high coincidence with that diagnosed by preoperative fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB), with coincidence rate of 84.48%. The results showed that the expressions of TGF-β1 in the thyroid cancers were significantly higher than in other benign thyroid lesions and normal thyroid tissues (P < 0.05). Moreover, high expression of TGFβ1 was found to closely related with the occurrence of thyroid cancers, while there was no significant difference of TGFβ 1 expression between different thyroid cancers.

The overexpression of TGF-β1 is associated with the occurrence of thyroid cancer, which can be used as a candidate for the diagnosis and prognosis of thyroid cancer.