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Background: Thyroid tumor is the most common malignant cancer of endocrinology, with an increasing incidence in the world. In the absence of specific markers of malignancy, it is a real challenge to distinguish benign and malignant thyroid tumors under the microscope.
Methods: The present study aimed to investigate the expression of Ki-67, Galectin-3, and pituitary tumor transforming gene (PTTG) in thyroid tumors, and to assess their diagnostic value as markers in the differential diagnoses of thyroid tumors. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was performed on formalin-fixed, paraffin-embeded tissue of 10 cases of normal thyroid tissue as negative control, 13 cases of follicular adenomas (FA), 14 cases of folli-cular carcinomas (FC), and 40 cases of papillary carcinomas (PC).
Results: Statistically, it was clearly found that all three markers should be used in a panel, not only distinguishing malignant and benign thyroid tumors but also differentiating follicular carcinoma from papillary carcinoma. It also confirmed previous observations that Galectin-3 alone is highly sensitive for papillary carcinoma but not adequately sensitive for follicular carcinoma.
Conclusions: PTTG alone is not adequately sensitive for the evaluation of any thyroid lesion. The combination of Galectin-3 and PTTG is complementary as a diagnostic biomarker for patients with papillary carcinoma.
DOI: Clin. Lab. 2012;58:419-426
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