There is a high prevalence of breast cancer in patients with benign thyroid diseases. - GreenMedInfo Summary
High prevalence of breast cancer in patients with benign thyroid diseases.
J Endocrinol Invest. 2010 Jul 1. Epub 2010 Jul 1. PMID: 20595798
Department of Endocrinology, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy. [email protected].
Background: in patients with breast cancer (BC) a high prevalence of benign thyroid diseases (BTD) has been described, Hashimoto's thyroiditis accounting for a large extent for this association. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of BC in a large group of patients with BTD. Patients: clinical records of 622 consecutive patients with BTD were examined. BC prevalence in BTD patients was compared with BC frequency in general population living in the same country. Results: BC prevalence in patients with BTD (38/622;6.11%) was significantly higher (p=0.0002) with respect to BC frequency in general population (2.07%). When patients were divided according to the age of menopause, in females older than 49 years BC frequency in BTD was significantly higher than in age-matched population (7.6% vs 3.3%; p= 0.006), while in female aged 30-49 years BC frequency in BTD was higher but not statistically significant than in age-matched population (3.7% vs 0.5%; p= 0.06). No significant difference of BC prevalence was found when patients were grouped according to the diagnosis of thyroid disorders: Graves' Disease, Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, Nodular Goiter associated or not associated with serum thyroid autoantibodies (TAb). No significant difference of BC frequency was observed between TAb+ (26/377;6.9%) and TAb- (12/245;4.9%) patients. The distribution of known risk factors for breast malignancies was similar in patients with or without BC. Conclusion: in patients with BTD the prevalence of BC is significantly higher than the expected, showing the usefulness of screening for breast malignancy of patients with BTD.