Results of a clinical correlation study indicate that patients with papillary thyroid cancer harbouring mutations in established oncogenes have inferior survival outcomes compared with patients harbouring wild-type forms of these genes. The genotypes of 1,051 patients with papillary thyroid cancer were investigated for the presence of mutations in the TERT promoter region and BRAFV600E mutations. A total of 292 patients had BRAFV600E mutations, 64 had TERT promoter mutations and 66 had both TERT promoter and BRAFV600E mutations; these groups of patients had 3.08, 6.62, and 29.86 cancer-specific deaths per 1,000 person years, respectively, compared with 0.8 in patients without either type of mutation. Further investigations of these risks of cancer-specific mortality confirmed this increased risk after adjustment for other clinicopathological variables.
References
Liu, R. et al. Mortality risk stratification by combining BRAF V600E and TERT promoter mutations in papillary thyroid cancer: genetic duet of BRAF and TERT promoter mutations in thyroid cancer mortality. JAMA Oncol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamaoncol.2016.3288 (2016)
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Sidaway, P. BRAF and/or TERT mutations increase mortality. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 13, 652 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2016.158
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2016.158