Influence of body mass index on the clinicopathological features of 13,995 papillary thyroid tumors

This retrospective study aimed to assess the association between obesity, gender, and specific clinicopathological features in patients with papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) and whether diagnostic ultrasonography (US) is adversely affected by obesity in these patients.

This study retrospectively analyzed 13,995 adult patients with PTC from a single medical center in China. Data stratification was performed to assess the association of obesity with US features and aggressive clinicopathological features in different models according to the World Health Organization Body Mass Index (WHO-BMI) and Chinese BMI classification (CN‐BMI). The odds ratio (OR) of malignant US features and aggressive clinicopathological features was calculated from binary logistic regression models.

The BMI, obesity ratio, malignant US features, and aggressive pathological characteristics of males were significantly higher than those of females. After adjusting for confounding factors, the association of obesity with malignant US features and aggressive pathological characteristics was found to be sex-dependent. Next, obesity (WHO-BMI) was found to have an “interfering effect” on the US assessment of PTC (OR = 0.754, 95% CI 0.609–0.932, P = 0.009) in women. Among both sexes, obesity (WHO-BMI) increased the risk of tumor size (OR_male = 1.539 and OR_female = 1.521) and multifocality (OR_male = 1.659 and OR_female = 1.449). However, obesity did not increase the risk of capsular invasion or tumor staging in males. The above results are consistent with the CN-BMI. In addition, age was found to have an “interfering effect” on the US evaluation of malignant nodules in both sexes.

The results of our study confirm that higher BMI is significantly associated with aggressive clinicopathological features of PTC. Gender differences were present with obesity ratios and aggressive clinicopathological features being significantly higher in men.