2023.08.03.86

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Insulin resistance profile as an indicator for Incidence of thyroid cancer

Ali, Reda Hussein^*; Sanaa Jameel Thamer¹; Dhamia Kasim Suker²; Majid Hameed Abbood³; Rafid R. Al-Tuma⁴; Loma Al-Mansouri⁵

*PhD student, Physiology/Biology Department, College of Sciences, Basrah University, Iraq; [email protected]. ORCID 0000-0003-3033-1516

¹Biology Department, College of Sciences, Basrah University, Iraq; [email protected]. ORCID 0000-0002-6793-5893

²Biology Department, College of Sciences, Basrah University, Iraq; http://[email protected] Orcid 0000-0002-6315-4360

³Al Zahraa College of Medicine, Basrah University, Iraq; [email protected]. ORCID 0000-0002-2625-8013

⁴Basrah Nuclear Medicine Center. Iraq; [email protected]

⁵College of Medicine University of Basrah. Iraq; [email protected]; ORCID 0000-0002-5138-8055

Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.21931/RB/2023.08.03.86

ABSTRACT

Thyroid nodules are commonly prevalent in human populations and have global concerns due to the high raped increase during the last decades. Some of them have malignant potential and cause life-threatening. The prospective cross-sectional study was conducted on 104 persons with thyroid nodules (25 with thyroid cancer and 79 samples were benign lesions) in Basrah, Iraq, from November 2019 to April 2022. To investigate the association of insulin resistance, Glucose, insulin hormone and obesity on thyroid cancer, Results: the thyroid cancer samples have higher serum levels of metabolic parameters, insulin hormone, Glucose, and insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) than benign samples, the male samples have a significant difference in HOMA-IR than females in all samples (malignant and benign samples), No substantial difference has been observed in BMI between thyroid cancer and harmless subjects; Conclusions: the serum metabolic parameters, insulin hormone, Glucose, and HOMA-IR play a vital role in future as an indicator for the diagnosis of thyroid cancer (papillary carcinoma) due to their increased levels in thyroid cancer samples than benign samples, no clear association between obesity and thyroid cancer incidence.

Keywords: Metabolic parameters; Insulin resistance; Glucose; Insulin hormone; Thyroid cancer; Homa -IR

INTRODUCTION

Cancer is a significant global health concern that affects public health on a large scale ¹. The uncontrolled division of cells and their invasive potential into nearby or remote tissues are defining features of a group of diseases known as Cancer (metastasis) ^2,3. Also, Cancer is considered an abnormal growth of cells caused by multiple changes in gene expression, leading to a dysregulated balance of cell proliferation and cell death and ultimately evolving into a population of cells that can invade tissues and metastasize to distant sites, causing significant morbidity and, if untreated, end of the host ⁴. Thyroid cancer is becoming the most dominant Cancer in the endocrine system. It is prevalence has increased during the last three decades over the world ^5–7, consisting of about 2.3% of all new cancer cases in the US ⁷. It accounts for ≤1% of all human malignancies, and the thyroid nodules are the majority of lesions that can be found in 19%-68% of randomly selected people have nodules in there thyroid gland, most of them benign nodules ⁸ 7% of them may have a suspicious nodule for thyroid cancer depending on age, gender, radiation exposure, family history and other factors ^5,9, in Iraqis population the thyroid nodules are ordinary. However, thyroid cancer is 1.7% of these nodules (10), while Mansour et al. (2020) ¹¹ found that the prevalence of thyroid cancer was 0.4% (n=77) from 17878 patients presented with thyroid lesions in the Iraqi population/ Basrah province.

Despite thyroid cancer being the most common type of endocrine Cancer ¹², it is a relatively rare disease and is responsible just for ≤1% of all human Cancer and responsible for six deaths per million persons annually ⁸; many studies documented that the overall Incidence of thyroid carcinoma has increased more rapidly than that of any other malignancy in recent years, especially in women 1³ dysregulated cellular growth is a feature of the cancer disease to provide more energy, to sustain the cellular proliferation, growth, made new vessels (angiogenesis). Strong evidence proved that dysregulated metabolism has an essential role in cells to promote oncogenesis ¹⁴ due to the thyroid gland having a significant role in all body metabolism, so any lesion of the thyroid gland will affect the metabolism, particularly glycemic ¹⁵. Previous studies have failed to demonstrate the effect of dysregulated metabolism during thyroid cancer and have only focused on studying the pathological impact of metabolism syndromes like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. This paper introduces a novel approach to investigating the role of metabolic syndrome during thyroid cancer disease, which has not been previously explored in the literature and needs more cross-sectional studies.

In this paper, we investigate the effect of some metabolic parameters like Glucose, Insulin hormone and Insulin resistance on thyroid cancer.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Study Design and Subjects. A clinical cross-sectional study was used to investigate the effect of Insulin resistance, Glucose and Insulin hormone on thyroid cancer; The study population consisted of 36 patients (25 serum samples and 36 tissues) with thyroid cancer (11 men, 25 women) and 79 samples (79 serum and 23 tissues) with benign thyroid lesions (7 men, 72 women) since the mean age of thyroid cancer samples was 36.166±16.84 years. The mean age of harmless subjects was 40.016±10.519 years (Figure 2-1). All subjects undergoing health checkups in Iraq/Basra province hospitals and medical centers from November 2019 to April 2022. All blood samples were collected at the first assessment of thyroid nodules (Ultrasound examination and Fine Needle Aspiration procedure). Our representatives in this study have a thyroid nodule different from the normal parenchyma of the normal thyroid gland on ultrasound examination. The collected data included gender, age, weight and height, thyroid function (T3, T4 and TSH) in addition to collected fasting blood serum samples for more tests, insulin hormone (by using Elabsceince ELIZA hormones kits, cat. No. E-EL-H2665) and fasting Glucose (Glucose kit by Biotech diagnostic company, UK). The BMI was determined according to ¹⁶, Insulin resistance ¹⁷. The data underwent statistical analysis and was processed using the statistical software IMP-SPSS-version 26 computer facilities. All data were presented in simple mean and standard deviation measures. ANOVA was applied to test the significance of difference among different means, correlation (person) was used to study the relationship between parameters, and a P value equal to or less than the 0.05 significance level was considered statistically significant.

RESULTS

The biological and biochemical parameters of the present study show there is no significant difference between Cancer and benign group samples according to gender in BMI (kg/m²) and age (years) parameters; the mean of BMI (kg/m²) was 2.27±0.64, 1.88±0.526 (kg/m²) (males, females respectively) in thyroid cancer patients, and 1.79±0.53 kg/m², 1.91±0.55kg/m²(males, females respectively) in benign thyroid disorder. While the mean age (years) in thyroid cancer was 47.55±11.75years, 38.88±13.15 years (males, females respectively) and 40.58±12.17 years, 41.07±11.87 years (males, females respectively), as well, no significance was detected between two groups (Cancer and benign groups) for thyroid function T3, T4 and TSH hormones, The concentration of Insulin hormone, Glucose, Insulin resistance and Quicki insulin resistance that were investigated by mean of (HOMA-IR) and Insulin sensitivity index (Quicki insulin resistance) using blood samples obtained from malignant thyroid cancer and benign (thyroid disorder) revealed that all parameters were higher in cancer patients in comparison with harmless subjects, except Quicki index was higher in mild than cancer samples. Since the value in cancer patients' Insulin hormone was 99.63±19.765 μIu/ml in males,28.04±10.48 μIu/ml in females, Glucose was was190.00±91.92mg/dI in males, 123.80±6.172 mg/dI in female and HOMA-IR 44.50±13.342 mmol/l in males, 12.488±6.797 mmol/l in females. In contrast, the value in benign subjects' insulin hormone was 28.23±10.879 μIu/ml in males, 24.88±11.612 μIu/ml in females, Glucose was 149.00±88.662mg/dL in males, 122.38±48 mg/dI in females and HOMA-IR was 13.502±9.94 mmol/l in males, 8.417±3.614 mmol/l in females. Moreover, statistically, there was a significant difference (p≤0.05) between the cancer patients and benign subjects table (1). According to the comparison between males and females, the malignant groups showed there were significant differences (p≤0.05) between the males and females in Insulin hormone (98.638±19.76 μIu/ml and 28.04±10.48 μIu/ml, respectively, males and females) table (2). However, the benign samples table showed no significant difference between genders (3). when investigating the influence of gender according to age group on metabolic parameters, the age group was divided into two categories, the less than 50 years group and the more than group, as shown in table (4); in thyroid samples, the mean of metabolic parameters, Insulin resistance (μIu/ml), glucose (mg/dl) and HOMA-IR (mmol/l) were a lowest in age group less than 50 years (70.74±16.193 μIu/ml, 103.67±41.861 mg/dl and 6.967±9.75 mmol/l) respectively than age group more than 50 years, in males group the results show there was the significant difference at p<0.05 to thyroid cancer group on benign subjects in Insulin hormone (in both age groups), Glucose (in age group more than50 years) and HOMA-IR (in both age groups). In contrast, there was no significant difference between age groups in female samples in all metabolic parameters (Table 5). The results of thyroid cancer samples correlation reveal that BMI correlated positively but non-significant with Insulin hormone (r=0.189, p value= 0.626), glucose (r=0.297, p value=0.476) and HOMA-IR (r=0.393, p value=0.384) figures (1,2 and 3), in benign samples the BMI has positively correlated with Insulin hormone (r=0.216, p value= 0.311), Glucose (r= 0.169, p value= 0.298) and HOMA-IR (0.133, p value=0.544) (Figures 4-6).

Table 1. Biological and biochemical parameters of all study samples (thyroid cancer and benign group)

Table 2. Relationship between some of the metabolic parameters according to both genders (Male and Female) in thyroid cancer patients

Table 3. Relationship between some of the metabolic parameters according to both genders (Male and Female) in the control group

Table 4. The levels of metabolic parameters according to age group in male samples

Table 5. the levels of metabolic parameters according to age group in females' sample

DISCUSSION

Abnormal cellular metabolism has been considered one of the hallmarks of malignant, which plays a vital role in oncogenesis ¹⁴^. Because cancer cells need high bioenergetic requirements to activate and maintain cell growth. The malignant cells preferred glycolysis to generate lactate compared to the more energy-efficient oxidative phosphorylation pathway, which produces more ATP per molecule of Glucose than glycolysis ^18,19. Choi et al. (2021) ²⁰ indicated that insulin resistance (Homa-IR index) could be helpful as an indicator for patients with a thyroid disorder. Furthermore, a positive correlation has been found between insulin resistance and hypothyroidism, especially in women.

The current study revealed a significant difference in Homa-IR between thyroid cancer patients and benign subjects; these findings agree with ^21,22. The results of the present study confirm that insulin resistance (Homa-IR) is a risk factor for thyroid cancer.

Mittal et al. (2012) and Şahin et al. (2013) ^23,24 also found a significant association between insulin resistance and papillary thyroid cancer.

Li et al. (2019) ²⁵ concluded that the thyroid nodules were higher in patients with metabolic syndrome than without metabolic syndrome due to the role of hyperglycemia in developing the thyroid nodules. Also, Arcidiacono et al.(2012) ²⁶ demonstrated that Insulin resistance has an essential role in malignant cells' proliferation and progression by an increase in circulating Insulin hormone, which leads to overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) that can damage DNA, contributing to mutagenesis and carcinogenesis. By his role in mitochondrial exhaustion, these initiating events lead to mitochondrial dysfunction and increased ROS ²⁷. Zhao et al. (2021) ²⁸ found that Abnormal glucose metabolism, high levels of Insulin hormone, and insulin resistance were significantly associated with the Incidence of thyroid cancer.

In the current study, the insulin hormone and Glucose levels were higher in thyroid cancer than in benign subjects. However, a previous study has reported that the fasting serum insulin level is higher in thyroid carcinoma patients than in controls ²⁹. other studies did not show the same result ^30–32^, but they refer that the insulin hormone was not prevalent in patients with thyroid cancer. Some other pathologic mechanisms may be more prominent during thyroid carcinogenesis.

It has been demonstrated that in the present study, insulin resistance was higher in men than women, and this is in agreement with Geer and Shen (2010) ³³, who demonstrated that the elevated visceral and hepatic adipose tissue in men, in conjunction with the lack of a possible protective effect of estrogen and lower adiponectin levels, may contribute to their higher insulin resistance in men compared with women.

The results of our study showed that the metabolic parameters in all samples have a positive correlation with BMI index, which agrees with Timóteo et al. (2014) ³⁴, which concluded that Insulin resistance HOMA-IR was directly correlated with BMI and can be an Indicator for metabolic syndrome.

CONCLUSIONS

The levels of serum insulin hormone, Glucose, Homa-IR, and quick were higher in thyroid cancer than in benign subjects. The females of the thyroid cancer group have a lower level of insulin hormone, Glucose, and insulin resistance than the males group.

The present study indicated that the serum metabolic parameters, insulin hormone, Glucose and HOMA-IR may play a vital role in the future as indicators for diagnosis of thyroid cancer (papillary carcinoma) due to their increased levels in thyroid cancer samples than benign samples; no clear association has been detected between obesity and thyroid cancer incidence.

Supplementary Materials: All supplementing data for this manuscript are viable with the corresponding author.

Author Contributions: All authors were contribute to accomplished and write this article

Funding: This research received no external funding

Informed Consent Statement: Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study

Data Availability Statement: all data of this study can be found with corresponding author

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Received: 25 June 2023/ Accepted: 26 August 2023 / Published:15 September 2023

Citation: Reda Hussein A; Jameel ThamerS; Kasim Suker D; Hameed Abbood M; Al-Tuma R R; Al-Mansouri L. Insulin resistance profile as an indicator for Incidence of thyroid cancer. Revis Bionatura 2023;8 (3) 86. http://dx.doi.org/10.21931/RB/2023.08.03.86