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BRAF V600E Mutation in Papillary Thyroid Cancer is Correlated with Adverse Clinicopathological Features but not with Iodine Exposure.

AIM
BRAF V600E activating mutation is the most frequent genetic abnormality in the pathogenesis of papillary thyroid carcinoma. We aimed to evaluate the association between BRAF V600E mutation and well-established prognostic clinicopathological characteristics as well as the iodine exposure.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
From 2000 to 2012, the data of PTC patients admitted to Dr. Lutfi Kirdar Kartal Education and Research Hospital, Turkey, were reviewed retrospectively. Clinicopathological parameters were collected. BRAF V600E mutation was analyzed by polymerase chain reaction method in tumor specimens. We hypothesized that BRAF V600E mutation prevalance is positively correlated with prolonged iodine exposure and expected to be higher in the second half of the recruitment period due to the increment in time spent from the iodinization process of the table salt in our country. Thus, iodine exposure was categorized as short-term (2000-2006) and long-term (2006-2012).


RESULTS
A total of 197 patients were accrued. The study population predominantly consisted of conventional subtype. A statistically significant relationship was observed between BRAF V600E mutation presence and age (p=0.03) conventional type PTC (p=0.00002), T4 stage (p<0.00001), vascular invasion (p=0.036), thyroid capsule invasion (p<0.00001), extrathyroidal tissue invasion (p<0.00001) and lymph node metastasis (p<0.00001). When categorized as long-term and short-term, iodine exposure, was not statistically significantly related with BRAF V600E mutation however, there were far more PTC cases in the long-term group (86.3% vs.13.7%).


CONCLUSION
We revealed that BRAFV600E mutation is associated with adverse clinicopathological parameters. Unlikely, there appeared to be no relation with long-term iodine exposure and BRAF V600E.