Surasawadee AusavaratJiraporn SriprapapornBusara SatayabanWanna ThongnoppakhunAunchalee LaipiriyakunBoontham AmornkitticharoenRujaporn ChanachaiChaveevan PattanachakMahidol University2018-11-232018-11-232015-08-04Thyroid Research. Vol.8, No.1 (2015)175666142-s2.0-84938603522https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/123456789/35403© 2015 Ausavarat et al. Background: Circulating thyrotropin receptor messenger ribonucleic acid (TSHR mRNA) assay has been validated in the follow-up of differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) because of its high sensitivity during thyroid hormone therapy and no interference with endogenous anti-thyroglobulin antibodies (TgAb) compared to serum thyroglobulin (Tg). We investigated the efficacy of TSHR mRNA assay in 160 DTC patients using quantitative PCR (qPCR). Findings: Only TSHR mRNA level of structural persistent disease with TgAb-positive (3.47 (2.97-9.53) pg equivalents/μg total RNA; p=0.013) and its subgroup of distant metastasis patients with TgAb-positive (5.55 (3.28-12.52) pg equivalents/μg total RNA; p=0.009) were significantly different from patients with no evidence of disease (2.32 (1.44-3.94) pg equivalents/μg total RNA). Applying cutoff at 2.00 pg equivalents/μg total RNA enabled us to predict structural persistent disease patients with a sensitivity of 62.3 % and a specificity of 42.9 %. Although, the sensitivity of TSHR mRNA assay in TgAb-postive patients (88.2 %) was superior than serum Tg (47.1 %) (p=0.00002), the accuracy of the test is only 54.5 %. Conclusions: This study demonstrated that TSHR mRNA assay has good sensitivity in TgAb-positive patients but it is neither specific enough as a first-line of testing nor a surrogate marker in the follow-up of our DTC patients.Mahidol UniversityBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular BiologyMedicineArticleSCOPUS10.1186/s13044-015-0024-4