The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a disruption of surgical care. The aim of this multi-centric, retrospective study was to evaluate the impact of the pandemic on surgical activity for thyroid disease among the Italian Units of Endocrine Surgery. Three phases of the pandemic were identified based on the epidemiological situation and the public measures adopted from the Italian Government (1st phase: from 9th March to 3rd May 2020; 2nd phase: from 4th May to 14th June; 3rd phase: from 15th June to 31st). The patients operated upon during these phases were compared to those who underwent surgery during the same period of the previous year. Overall, 3892 patients from 28 Italian endocrine surgical units were included in the study, 1478 (38%) operated upon during COVID-19 pandemic, and 2414 (62%) during the corresponding period of 2019. The decrease in the number of operations was by 64.8%, 44.7% and 5.1% during the three phases of COVID-19 pandemic, compared to 2019, respectively. During the first and the second phases, the surgical activity was dedicated mainly to oncological patients. No differences in post-operative complications were noted between the two periods. Oncological activity for thyroid cancer was adequately maintained during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The human microbiota is an integral component in the maintenance of health and of the immune system. Microbiome-wide association studies have found numerous diseases associated to dysbiosis. Studies are needed to move beyond correlations and begin to address causation. Autoimmune thyroid diseases (ATD) are one of the most common organ-specific autoimmune disorders with an increasing prevalence, higher than 5% worldwide. Most frequent manifestations of ATD are Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and Graves’ disease. The exact etiology of ATD remains unknown. Until now it is not clear whether bacterial infections can trigger ATD or modulate the efficacy of treatment and prognosis. The aim of our review is to characterize the microbiota and in ATD and to evaluate the impact of dysbiosis on treatment and prognosis. Moreover, variation of gut microbiome has been associated with thyroid cancer and benign nodules. Here we will characterize the microbioma in benign thyroid nodules, and papillary thyroid cancer to evaluate their implications in the pathophysiology and progression.

Background Medullary thyroid carcinoma is a malignant uncommon and aggressive tumour of the parafollicular C cells. In about 75% of cases it is sporadic while, in case of RET mutation, it is associated to multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 (25% of cases). The biochemical features of medullary thyroid carcinoma include the production of calcitonin and carcinoembryogenic antigen. The above-mentioned features are useful in the diagnostic process as well as in the follow up and in the prognostication of the disease. Even if calcitonin elevation is strongly associated to MTC, it can also be found increased in many pathological different conditions as pregnancy, lactation, C-cells hyperplasia, autoimmune thyroiditis, end stage renal disease, lung and prostate cancer and several neuroendocrine tumours. Major medullary thyroid tumours are usually connected to high doses of circulating calcitonin, in fact non-secretory variants have hardly been described. Case presentation We herein report the case of a 59 years old male, who had undergone total thyroidectomy for multinodular goiter with negative preoperative calcitonin, showing medullary thyroid carcinoma at definitive pathology. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case documenting a non-secretory medullary thyroid carcinoma, with double negative markers at the time of diagnosis and at the relapse. Conclusion A Literature review underlining pathological hypothesis, differential diagnosis and alternative and innovative biomarkers to identify non-secretory medullary thyroid carcinoma was carried out.

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SUMMARY Objective Inflammation and nutritional status play an important role in the prognosis of cancer. Lymphocyte-to monocyte ratio (LMR), neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and prognostic nutritional index (PNI) are independent prognostic scores in numerous cancers. However, any study showed their prognostic role in low-risk differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC). We aimed to clarify and identify the prognostic value of inflammation indices in low-risk DTC patients. Methods We analysed data from 116 patients, dividing the population into two groups, according to AJCC staging system (8 th edition). The LMR, NLR, PLR and PNI cut-off value were determined using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Disease-free survival (DFS) was calculated with Kaplan-Meyer and Log-Rank tests and the risk of recurrence was calculated with univariate and multivariate Cox regression. Statistical significance was p < 0.05. Results We found a baseline NLR value ≥ 1.750 (75% sensitivity, 40.2% specificity) and a baseline LMR value of 3.83 (66.7% sensitivity, 48.9% specificity). Overall DFS was 74.995 ± 3.236 with a p value of 0.678. NLR showed a hazard ratio for recurrence with almost twice the risk of recurrence (Adjusted Hazard Ratio /HR A ): 1.828, p-value = 0.019). Conclusions NLR can be considered a prognostic score with twice the risk of recurrence in low-risk DTC patients with NLR < 1.750.