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Familial Adenomatous Polyposis-Associated Thyroid Cancer: A Clinical, Pathological, and Molecular Genetics Study
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Familial Adenomatous Polyposis-Associated Thyroid Cancer: A Clinical, Pathological, and Molecular Genetics Study

Claudio Soravia, Sonia L. Sugg, Terri Berk, Angela Mitri, Hong Cheng, Steven Gallinger, Zane Cohen, Sylvia L. Asa and Bharati V. Bapat
The American journal of pathology, Vol.154(1), pp.127-135
01/01/1999
DOI: 10.1016/S0002-9440(10)65259-5
PMCID: PMC1853451
PMID: 9916927
url
https://europepmc.org/articles/pmc1853451View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

We report two familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP) kindreds with thyroid cancer, harboring two apparently novel germline APC mutations. The clinical phenotype in the first kindred was typical of classical adenomatous polyposis, whereas the second kindred exhibited an attenuated adenomatous polyposis phenotype. There was a female predominance with a mean age of 34 years (range, 23–49) at cancer diagnosis. Multiple sections of four thyroid tumors from three FAP patients were analyzed in detail. Histological examination of thyroid tumors showed a range of morphological features. Some tumors exhibited typical papillary architecture and were associated with multifocal carcinoma; in others, there were unusual areas of cribriform morphology, and spindle-cell components with whorled architecture. Immunoreactivity for thyroglobulin and high molecular weight keratins was strong. Somatic APC mutation analysis revealed an insertion of a novel long interspersed nuclear element-1-like sequence in one tumor sample, suggesting disruption of APC . In three FAP patients, ret /PTC-1 and ret /PTC-3 were expressed in thyroid cancers. No positivity was observed for ret /PTC-2. p53 immunohistochemistry was positive in only one section of a recurrent thyroid tumor sample. Our data suggest that genetic alterations in FAP- associated thyroid cancer involve loss of function of APC along with the gain of function of ret /PTC, while alterations of p53 do not appear to be an early event in thyroid tumorigenesis.
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