19 July 2021
A new study on paediatric and adolescent thyroid cancer in Cyprus, by UNIC Medical School Professor of Paediatric Oncology/Haematology Loizos Loizou and his scientific team, is published in the latest online edition of the Elsevier journal Cancer Epidemiology. It includes patients aged 0–19 years who were diagnosed with thyroid cancer in the Paediatric Oncology Registry of Cyprus. The study demonstrated that thyroid cancer incidence rates in Cyprus were among the world’s highest. Furthermore, the rate of annual percentage increase of the thyroid cancer cases in this age group was very high at 7.5% yearly for the 20-year study period, 1998-2017.
Professor Loizou said ‘Increasing trends mainly affected males and females aged 15−19 years with papillary thyroid carcinoma being the dominant type’ and added that ‘the increase of metastatic cases suggests a true increase of thyroid cancer rather than overdiagnosis. Although prognosis is excellent with 100 % survival, the rising incidence rate is unexplained and it troubles us. We therefore need to study it further and try to identify the causes.’ Read more about the study in the article “Increasing incidence and survival of paediatric and adolescent thyroid cancer in Cyprus 1998–2017: A population-based study from the Cyprus Pediatric Oncology Registry” here