Skip to main content
Download PDF
/v1/supplement/title
  • Poster presentation
  • Open access
  • Published:

Performance of shear-waves elastography in the non-invasive assessment of thyroid stiffness in patients with viral hepatitis

BMC Infectious Diseases volume 14, Article number: P54 (2014) Cite this article

Background

In chronic HCV infection, high rates of viral replication are often associated with progressive liver fibrosis. As HCV has also been shown to replicate in other organs, such as the thyroid [1], we have performed a pilot study to assess thyroid stiffness through non-invasive elastography.

Methods

One trained operator performed shear-waves elastography (SWE) of the liver and thyroid in patients with chronic HCV infection, using Aixplorer (SuperSonic Imagine, Aix-en-Provence, France).

Results

We assessed 21 patients with chronic HCV infection, with a male-to-female ratio of 0.6:1. The mean age was 51.4±11.9 years. The mean duration of HCV infection was 5.2±5.5 years (range: 0-20 years). The predominant HCV genotype was 1b (in 16 patients – data not available for 5 patients), and the predominant IL28-B genotype was CT (9 patients), followed by TT (7 patients) and CC (3 patients) – IL28-B data were not available for 2 patients.

Most (17, 81.0%) of the patients had received prior anti-HCV therapy with peg-interferon+ribavirin (PR) or direct-acting antivirals (DAA)-based treatment, and 13 of them displayed SVR (12 with DAA-based therapy and one with PR – the patient had an IL28-B genotype CC), while 4 displayed non-response to PR (IL28-B genotypes CT and TT).

Eight of the patients (38.1%) had a previously diagnosed thyroid dysfunction, and 4 of them (19.0%) were under thyroid substitution treatment at the time of evaluation. Five of the patients (23.8%) presented thyroid nodules on ultrasound examination.

The mean liver SWE was 9.6±4.2 kPa and the mean thyroid SWE was 25.1±10.4 kPa overall, and 26.2±11.3 kPa for the left thyroid lobe and 24.7±13.0 kPa for the right thyroid lobe.

Conclusion

This pilot study warrants further dynamic assessment of liver and thyroid stiffness in patients with chronic HCV infection, on larger study groups. To our knowledge, this is the first such study on thyroid stiffness in HCV-infected patients.

References

  1. Bartolomé J, Rodríguez-Iñigo E, Quadros P, Vidal S, Pascual-Miguelañez I, Rodríguez-Montes JA, García-Sancho L, Carreño V: Detection of hepatitis C virus in thyroid tissue from patients with chronic HCV infection. J Med Virol. 2008, 80: 1588-94. 10.1002/jmv.21269.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Streinu-Cercel A: Hepatitis C in the interferon-free era. GERMS. 2013, 3: 114-10.11599/germs.2013.1044.

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgement

This paper is partially supported by the Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources Development (SOP HRD), financed from the European Social Fund and by the Romanian Government under the contract numbers POSDRU/159/1.5/S/137390.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest, Romania

    Oana Săndulescu, Anca Streinu-Cercel & Adrian Streinu-Cercel

  2. National Institute for Infectious Diseases "Prof. Dr. Matei Balş", Bucharest, Romania

    Oana Săndulescu, Anca Streinu-Cercel, Monica Andreea Stoica, Daniela Manolache & Adrian Streinu-Cercel

Authors
  1. Oana Săndulescu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Anca Streinu-Cercel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Monica Andreea Stoica
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Daniela Manolache
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Adrian Streinu-Cercel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Oana Săndulescu.

Rights and permissions

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Săndulescu, O., Streinu-Cercel, A., Stoica, M.A. et al. Performance of shear-waves elastography in the non-invasive assessment of thyroid stiffness in patients with viral hepatitis. BMC Infect Dis 14 (Suppl 7), P54 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-14-S7-P54

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-14-S7-P54

Keywords