Verhandlungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Pathologie
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Verh Dtsch Ges Pathol · Jan 1997
[Radiation-induced thyroid carcinomas in children: high prevalence of RET rearrangement].
Papillary thyroid carcinomas were observed in children living in the Gomel region of Belarus at the time of the Chernobyl reactor accident in April 1986. Radioactive fallout, iodine-131 in particular, led to thyroid doses of > 10 Gy in some cases. Till now, more than 400 thyroid carcinomas developed. ⋯ Besides ELE/RET transcripts, reciprocal RET/ELE transcripts were expressed indicating a complete inversion of the two genes after double stand break and their functional activity in both rearranged forms. Paracentric inversion on chromosome 10 bringing the functional tyrosine kinase domain of c-RET under the regulatory control of the ubiquitously expressed ELE gene appears to be a typical molecular lesion in thyroid carcinomas of children after radiation. This rearrangement is thought to endow juvenile thyrocytes with a clonal growth advantage and may be a critical initiating event of thyroid carcinogenesis in radiation-exposed children.