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Hypothyroidism Improves Prognosis in Lung Cancer: Presented at AACR

By Charlene Laino

ORLANDO, FL -- April 1, 2004 -- Lung cancer patients with primary hypothyroidism have better clinical outcomes and a more indolent course than euthyroid patients, results of a retrospective case-control study suggest.

Aleck Hercbergs, MD, Staff Oncologist, Department of Radiation Oncology, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio, United States, presented the findings here on March 30^th at the American Association for Cancer Research 95^th Annual Meeting.

Dr. Hercbergs has been studying the link between thyroid disease and lung cancer since the provocative observation, reported 18 years ago, that a man with lung cancer achieved a remission following a myxedema coma. More recently, a large population-based study of patients treated for hyperthyroidism by radioiodine ablation of the thyroid had a significantly lower prevalence and risk of dying from lung cancer.

Therefore, Dr. Hercbergs and colleagues reviewed the charts of 1,979 patients with Stages 1-4 lung cancer treated between January 1996 and July 2002. Of these, 85 patients had hypothyroidism and 85 were euthyroid.

Among the hypothyroid patients, 70 had non-small-cell lung cancer and 15 had small cell types. The female: male ratio was 3.35:1. Nineteen patients had Stage 1 disease, 19 had Stage 2, 86 had Stage 3, and 46 had Stage 4 cancer.

Hypothyroid patients were on average 4.30 years older at diagnosis than the euthyroid patients (70.73 years vs. 66.43 years, respectively; P = .0006). "This suggests that hypothyroid lung cancer patients are asymptomatic for a longer period, and are thus diagnosed later than euthyroid patients with lung cancer."

Also significant was the finding that hypothyroid cancer patients lived longer than the euthyroid patients (mean 14.5 vs. 11.1 months; P = .014).

"These findings add to the growing evidence defining the thyroid [gland] as a modulator of and significant prognostic factor in cancer," Dr. Hercbergs said. "The induction of hypothyroidism should be evaluated prospectively as a potential strategy for treating solid tumours," he recommended.


[Study title: Thyroid hormones and lung cancer: primary hypothyroidism is prognostically significant for survival in lung cancer. Abstract 4440]

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