Breast cancer in patients with Hashimoto's thyroiditis

The case records of four groups of women over thirty on the books of a thyroid clinic were used to explore a possible association between breast cancer and Hashimoto's thyroiditis. The index group consisted of 1810 women (10 160 person-years of observation) with Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and the three control groups, matched by sex, age, marital status, and residency, were selected from patients with myxoedema (essential hypothyroidism), benign nodular goitre, or hyperthyroidism. The incidence of breast cancer for the index group, though not for control groups, was significantly higher than that expected from data for the general population, suggesting that patients with Hashimoto's thyroiditis are one high-risk population for breast cancer.

Leucocyte migration inhibition in thyroid disease. Effect of human thyroid microsomes and thyroglobulin

Leucocyte migration inhibition tests (LMT) were carried out in 49 patients with thyroid disease and 47 healthy controls using purified human thyroid microsomes and thyroglobulin as the antigens. Patients with autoimmune thyroiditis or thyrotoxicosis gave positive LMT with thyroid microsomes, while the leucocytes of healthy subjects and patients with non-toxic-colloid goitre were inactive. Control tests with liver microsomes gave negative results in all groups. In Hashimoto’s goitrous thyroiditis, it was further possible to show that the most intense cell-mediated hypersensitivity was present in patients who had the ‘hypercellular’ histological variant of the disease, which has a mild clinical course and is characterized serologically by low or absent thyroglobulin antibodies and moderate titres of thyroid microsomal antibodies. Slow regression of the goitre despite thyroxine treatment was associated with marked migration inhibition in the presence of thyroid microsomes. Thyroglobulin proved inactive in LMT in both patients and controls in concentrations varying from 50 to 5,000 <i>μ</i>g/ml. The reason for this is not clear in view of positive results occasionally reported by other workers.