Preliminary Study on the Relationship of BRAF Mutations with the Outcome of the First 131I Radiotherapy and Malignant Biological Characteristics in Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma

Linjue Shangguan; Peipei Zhang; Shengwei Fang; Kaili Xiang; Yawen Geng; Dingcun Luo; Chunlei Zhao

doi:10.2147/IJGM.S337311

Preliminary Study on the Relationship of BRAF Mutations with the Outcome of the First ¹³¹I Radiotherapy and Malignant Biological Characteristics in Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma

Int J Gen Med. 2021 Nov 30:14:8981-8989. doi: 10.2147/IJGM.S337311. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Linjue Shangguan^#¹, Peipei Zhang¹, Shengwei Fang¹, Kaili Xiang¹, Yawen Geng¹, Dingcun Luo^#², Chunlei Zhao^#¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Nuclear Medicine, Hangzhou Cancer Hospital, Hangzhou, 310002, People's Republic of China.
² Department of Tumor Surgery, Hangzhou First People's Hospital, Hangzhou, 310006, People's Republic of China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the relationship of BRAF mutation with the outcome of the first postoperative ¹³¹I treatment and malignant biological characteristics in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC).

Methods: Thirty-three patients with PTC who underwent their first ¹³¹I treatment after total thyroidectomy were enrolled in this study. BRAF mutation in postoperative tumor tissue and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in peripheral blood at the time of ¹³¹I treatment were detected. According to the status of BRAF mutation, all patients were divided into 2 groups in each category of tumor tissues and ctDNA, respectively: 1) BRAF mutation, 2) BRAF wild-type. The Fisher's exact test was performed to analyze the relationship of BRAF mutation in either tumor tissue or ctDNA with the outcome of the first ¹³¹I treatment and malignant characteristics of PTC.

Results: BRAF mutation was detected in tumor tissues in 25 patients (25/33,75.8%), and all the patients had single mutation site. In ctDNA, BRAF mutation was detected in 5 patients (5/33, 15.2%), and all the patients had single mutation site. In both tumor tissues and ctDNA, BRAF mutation showed no relationship with the outcome of first ¹³¹I treatment and the malignant biological characteristics (P>0.05).

Conclusion: The value of BRAF mutation alone might be limited in predicting therapeutic outcome of the first ¹³¹I treatment in PTC. No definitive relevance was found between BRAF mutation and malignant biological features in PTC.

Keywords: BRAF; gene mutation; papillary thyroid carcinoma; radiotherapy.

Grants and funding

This study was sponsored by the Key Project of Science and Technology Planning of Health in Hangzhou (2018ZD02), the project of public beneficial technology research and social development of Zhejiang Province (LGF20H180010), and the Key project of Health Commission in Hangzhou (OO20190490). This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.