A team from Shandong Provincial Hospital integrated data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and Chinese multicenter health examination data to explore factors influencing the reference intervals of TSH and thyroid hormones. The results showed that with advancing age, TSH increased and total triiodothyronine (T3) decreased, while total thyroxine (T4) remained relatively stable. Racial and gender differences existed in some thyroid function indicators. After adopting age-, gender-, and race-specific reference intervals, 48.5% of patients with subclinical hypothyroidism and 31.2% with subclinical hyperthyroidism could be reclassified as “normal”, confirming the importance of more precise reference intervals for diagnosing thyroid dysfunction.
Research on imaging and molecular diagnosis of thyroid cancer remains highly active. A team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University developed an artificial intelligence deep-learning radiomics model based on preoperative ultrasound images, which can assist in the noninvasive prediction of inflammatory subtypes and prognosis of papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). To address the difficulty in differentiating benign and malignant thyroid follicular tumors, West Lake University, together with several domestic hospitals, conducted in‑depth proteomic detection and machine learning analysis on follicular tumors, and established a 24‑protein classifier based on targeted proteomics, with a negative predictive value of 95.7% in preoperative benign‑malignant discrimination. Based on an international multicenter cohort of 4,746 PTC patients, Professor Mingzhao Xing’s team confirmed that integrating tumor BRAF V600E and TERT promoter mutation status into the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging system could more accurately distinguish differences in patient mortality risk compared with the traditional four‑tier risk staging.
In terms of updates in adjunctive diagnostic techniques, a new domestic recombinant human TSH showed favorable performance in phase 3 clinical trials. In postoperative patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC), its effect in stimulating thyroglobulin (Tg) secretion and residual thyroid iodine uptake was non‑inferior to thyroid hormone withdrawal, and it significantly alleviated hypothyroid symptoms related to withdrawal, helping to improve patients’ quality of life and compliance during postoperative follow‑up and treatment.