Thyroid cancer diagnosis by Raman spectroscopy

Over the last 50 years, the incidence of human thyroid cancer disease has seen a significative increment. This comes along with an even higher increment of surgery, since, according to the international guidelines, patients are sometimes addressed to surgery also when the fine needle aspiration gives undetermined cytological diagnosis. As a matter of fact, only 30% of the thyroid glands removed for diagnostic purpose have a post surgical histological report of malignancy: this implies that about 70% of the patients have suffered an unnecessary thyroid removal. Here we show that Raman spectroscopy investigation of thyroid tissues provides reliable cancer diagnosis. Healthy tissues are consistently distinguished from cancerous ones with an accuracy of ∼ 90%, and the three cancer typology with highest incidence are clearly identified. More importantly, Raman investigation has evidenced alterations suggesting an early stage of transition of adenoma tissues into cancerous ones. These results suggest that Raman spectroscopy may overcome the limits of current diagnostic tools

Regression of papillary thyroid cancer during nivolumab for renal cell cancer

Immune checkpoint inhibitors have been recently approved for cancer treatment. Nivolumab is a monoclonal antibody specific for programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) that modulates T-cell response. It was initially used for the treatment of malignant melanoma and then approved in other cancers, such as non-small cell lung cancer and clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). So far, the activity of nivolumab in patients with thyroid malignancies has been reported in a single case of anaplastic thyroid cancer. Here, we report the case of a patient with ccRCC who developed a papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) under first-line sunitinib treatment. During nivolumab, the second-line treatment for ccRCC, we unexpectedly observed a complete regression of PTC

Clinical, biochemical and radiological profile of normocalcemic primary hyperparathyroidism

The clinical and radiological aspects of normocalcaemic hyperparathyroidism (NHPT) are confounded by differing methods used to rule out secondary hyperparathyroidism and by the small sample size