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Type and prevalence of BRAF mutations are closely associated with papillary thyroid carcinoma histotype and patients’ age but not with tumour aggressiveness

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Abstract

A high prevalence of the BRAFV600E somatic mutation was recently reported in several series of papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTC). This mutation appears to be particularly prevalent in PTC with a predominantly papillary architecture. Another BRAF mutation (K601E) was detected in a follicular adenoma and in some cases of the follicular variant of PTC. The few studies on record provided controversial data on the relationship between the occurrence of BRAF mutations and clinicopathologic parameters such as gender, age and tumour staging. In an attempt to clarify such controversies we decided to enlarge our previous series to 315 tumours or tumour-like lesions diagnosed in 280 patients, including a thorough analysis of several clinicopathologic features. The BRAFV600E mutation was exclusively detected in PTC with a papillary or mixed follicular/papillary architecture both of the conventional type (46%) and of other histotypes, such as microcarcinoma (43%), Warthin-like PTC (75%) and oncocytic variant of PTC (55%). The BRAFK601E mutation was detected in four of the 54 cases of the follicular variant of PTC (7%). The mean age of patients with conventional PTC harbouring BRAFV600E (46.7 years) was significantly higher (P<0.0001) than that of patients with conventional PTC without BRAFV600E (29.5 years). The BRAF (BRAFV600E) mutated PTC did not exhibit signs of higher aggressiveness (size, vascular invasion, extra-thyroid extension and nodal metastasis) and were in fact less often multicentric than PTC without the mutation.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Drs. Valeriano Leite and Xavier Matias-Guiu for having provided material from their hospitals. We are also grateful to Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia for grant support to Vítor Trovisco, Ana Preto, Jorge Lima, Patrícia Castro, Valdemar Máximo, Tiago Botelho, Severina Moreira and Ana Margarida Meireles.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IPATIMUP (Institute of Molecular Pathology and Immunology of the University of Porto), R. Roberto Frias s/n, 4200, Porto, Portugal

    Vítor Trovisco, Paula Soares, Ana Preto, Jorge Lima, Patrícia Castro, Valdemar Máximo, Tiago Botelho, Severina Moreira, Ana Margarida Meireles & Manuel Sobrinho-Simões

  2. Department of Pathology, Medical Faculty of the University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Paula Soares & Manuel Sobrinho-Simões

  3. Department of Pathology, Medical Faculty of the University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Inês Vieira de Castro

  4. Department of Pathology, Hospital São João, Porto, Portugal

    João Magalhães & Manuel Sobrinho-Simões

  5. Pathology Department, Medical Radiology Research Centre, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Obninsk, Russia

    Alexander Abrosimov

  6. Department of Pathology, Hospital Clínico Universitario, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

    José Cameselle-Teijeiro

Authors
  1. Vítor Trovisco
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  2. Paula Soares
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  3. Ana Preto
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  4. Inês Vieira de Castro
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  5. Jorge Lima
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  6. Patrícia Castro
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  7. Valdemar Máximo
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  8. Tiago Botelho
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  9. Severina Moreira
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  10. Ana Margarida Meireles
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  11. João Magalhães
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  12. Alexander Abrosimov
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  13. José Cameselle-Teijeiro
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  14. Manuel Sobrinho-Simões
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Manuel Sobrinho-Simões.

Additional information

V. Trovisco and P. Soares contributed equally to this work

Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia POCTI/FEDER (POCTI/NSE/48171/2002)

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Trovisco, V., Soares, P., Preto, A. et al. Type and prevalence of BRAF mutations are closely associated with papillary thyroid carcinoma histotype and patients’ age but not with tumour aggressiveness. Virchows Arch 446, 589–595 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00428-005-1236-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00428-005-1236-0

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