Correlation between TERT C228T and clinic-pathological features in pediatric papillary thyroid carcinoma

The aims of the present study were to reveal the prevalence of the TERT C228T mutation in pediatric papillary thyroid carcinoma (PPTC) and to further investigate the role of the TERT C228T mutation in PPTC. We also tested another TERT mutation, TERT C250T, although this was not detected in PPTC patients. In this study, 48 patients with PPTC (41 with classic PPTC) were enrolled. DNA was extracted from PPTC tissues and TERT C228T mutation analysis was performed. Chi-squared analysis, Fisher’s exact test, and a t-test were applied to test the significance of differences. The TERT C228T mutation presented in 13 (27.1%) of the 48 PPTC patients and 10 (24.4%) of the 41 classical PPTC patients. There were significant differences between PPTC patients with the TERT C228T mutation and those without in terms of modified radical neck dissection, multifocality, capsular invasion, extrathyroidal invasion, and American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) tumor stage (P<0.05). In classical PPTC, there were additional significant differences in other clinic-pathological features, such as AJCC nodal stage (P=0.009) and American Thyroid Association (ATA) PPTC stage (P=0.021) between patients with and without the TERT C228T mutation. These findings indicate that the TERT C228T mutation is significantly correlated with certain aggressive clinic-pathological features of PPTC.