Benign Thyroid Diseases and Risk of Thyroid Cancer: A Nationwide Cohort Study

Context: Thyroid nodules, adenomas, and goiter have consistently been associated with thyroid cancer risk. Few studies have assessed whether thyroid dysfunction and thyroid autoimmunity influence this risk.

Objective: To examine thyroid cancer risk after diagnoses of a wide range of benign thyroid conditions.

Design: Hospital and cancer registry linkage cohort study for the years 1978 to 2013.

Setting: Nationwide (Denmark).

Participants: Patients diagnosed with hyperthyroidism (n = 85,169), hypothyroidism (n = 63,143), thyroiditis (n = 12,532), nontoxic nodular goiter (n = 65,782), simple goiter (n = 11,582), other/unspecified goiter (n = 21,953), or adenoma (n = 6,481) among 8,258,807 residents of Denmark during the study period.

Main Outcome Measures: We computed standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) for differentiated thyroid cancer, excluding the first 12 months of follow-up after benign thyroid disease diagnosis.

Results: SIRs were significantly elevated for all benign thyroid diseases apart from hypothyroidism. SIRs were higher for men than women and in the earlier follow-up periods. Elevated SIRs were observed for localized and regional/distant thyroid cancer. After excluding the first 10 years of follow-up, hyperthyroidism [n = 27 thyroid cancer cases; SIR = 2.00; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.32 to 2.92], nontoxic nodular goiter (n = 83; SIR = 4.91; 95% CI: 3.91 to 6.09), simple goiter (n = 8; SIR = 4.33; 95% CI: 1.87 to 8.53), other/unspecified goiter (n = 20; SIR = 3.94; 95% CI: 2.40 to 6.08), and adenoma (n = 9; SIR = 6.02; 95% CI: 2.76 to 11.5) remained positively associated with thyroid cancer risk.

Conclusions: We found an unexpected increased risk of differentiated thyroid cancer, including regional/distant disease, following diagnosis of hyperthyroidism and thyroiditis that could not be solely attributed to increased medical surveillance. Hypothyroidism was less clearly associated with thyroid cancer risk.