Expression and Clinical Significance of Thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor in the Subtypes of Papillary thyroid carcinomas

Objective: To investigate the expression of TSH receptors (TSHR) in various subtypes of Papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTC) by immunohistochemistry.

Methods: Retrospective analyses were carried out to the clinical data of 108 PTC patients randomly admitted into the Department of Thyroid and Breast Surgery, The Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University from March 2020 to December 2020. The archived paraffin blocks of the 108 cases as well as 18 contiguous normal thyroid tissues (control group) were taken from the Department of Pathology of The Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University. The pathological types of all PTC tissues were detected and the expression of TSHR was determined.

Results: TSHR expression was 86.11% positive in PTC tissues; with 85.00% positive in classical group; with 75.86% positive in micro group; with 84.61% positive in follicular group; with 83.33% positive in oncocytic group; with 50.00% positive in invasive group. TSHR expression was 100% in normal thyroid tissues. So TSHR expression in normal thyroid tissues is significantly higher than that in PTC; TSHR expression in microcarcinoma is stronger than in the other subtypes; there is no significant difference among the other subtypes.

Conclusions: TSH suppression works better on microcarcinoma than on the other subtypes. And the effects on non-invasive subtypes are better than on invasive subtypes.