Expression of Estrogen and Progesterone Receptors in papillary Thyroid carcinoma

Background:Thyroid carcinoma, including papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), occurs mostly in womenand sex hormones may play a role in the pathogenesis and clinical course. The objective ofthis study was to evaluate the prognostic relevance of estrogen and progesterone receptors inPTC with regard to age, gender, tumor size and lymph node involvement.Materials and Methods:Immunohistochemical stains were performed on 92 tissue blocks of PTC for estrogenreceptor(ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) expression in tumor cells. A Chi-Square testand Mann-Whitney U test were used to determine statistical difference using statisticalsoftware SPSS (version 18). A p-value of < 0.05 was considered as significant level.Results:The mean age of patients was 39.32 ± 1.7 years (range 13-80), with 79(85.9%) women and13 (14.1%) men. Lymph node involvement was seen in 76.1% of patients. The average tumorsize was 3.6 ± 2.21 cm. The rate of ER and PR expression were 46.75% and 5.6%,respectively. ER expression for female was higher than males (P=0.014), but no relation wasfound between male and females in PR expression (P=0.7). Also there was no statisticaldifference between ER and PR expression with respect to age, lymph node involvement andtumor size.Conclusion:Our study showed higher ER expression in females than males with PTC. No relation wasfound between the expression of these receptors and age of presentation, lymph nodeinvolvement and tumor size. Further investigation is required to determine the prognosticimportance of ER and PR in PTC.

Keywords:

Papillary thyroid carcinoma , Estrogen receptor , progesterone receptor