Thyroid Cancer Polygenic Risk Score Improves Classification of Thyroid Nodules as Benign or Malignant

Thyroid nodule ultrasound-based risk stratification schemas rely on the presence of high-risk sonographic features. However, some malignant thyroid nodules have benign appearance on thyroid ultrasound. New methods for thyroid nodule risk assessment are needed.

We investigated polygenic risk score (PRS) accounting for inherited thyroid cancer risk combined with ultrasound-based analysis for improved thyroid nodule risk assessment.

The convolutional neural network classifier was trained on thyroid ultrasound still images and cine clips from 621 thyroid nodules. Phenome-wide association study (PheWAS) and PRS PheWAS were used to optimize PRS for distinguishing benign and malignant nodules. PRS was evaluated in 73 346 participants in the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine Biobank.

When the deep learning model output was combined with thyroid cancer PRS and genetic ancestry estimates, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of the benign vs malignant thyroid nodule classifier increased from 0.83 to 0.89 (DeLong, P value = .007). The combined deep learning and genetic classifier achieved a clinically relevant sensitivity of 0.95, 95% CI [0.88-0.99], specificity of 0.63 [0.55-0.70], and positive and negative predictive values of 0.47 [0.41-0.58] and 0.97 [0.92-0.99], respectively. AUROC improvement was consistent in European ancestry-stratified analysis (0.83 and 0.87 for deep learning and deep learning combined with PRS classifiers, respectively). Elevated PRS was associated with a greater risk of thyroid cancer structural disease recurrence (ordinal logistic regression, P value = .002).

Augmenting ultrasound-based risk assessment with PRS improves diagnostic accuracy.