Association between metabolic syndrome and clinicopathological features of papillary thyroid cancer

Background Metabolic syndrome (MetS) was a risk factor for papillary thyroid cancer (PTC). Whether MetS impacts the aggressiveness of PTC is still unclear. We carried out this study to clarify this issue. Methods We evaluated 745 consecutive PTC patients treated with surgery. Patients were divided into three groups based on their number of MetS components: patients without any MetS components, patients with 1–2 MetS components, and patients with 3–5 MetS components. The clinical features and histological aggressiveness of PTC at the time of diagnosis were evaluated. Results A total of 745 patients were included in this study. And, 145 patients had three or more metabolic components and were diagnosed as MetS. MetS was a risk factor for larger tumors (OR = 2.29, 95% CI: 1.31–4.03), more lymph node metastasis (OR = 1.97, 95% CI: 1.11–3.51), and later clinical stage (OR = 7.92, 95% CI: 1.59–39.34) after correction for age, sex, and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) level and body mass index (BMI). Conclusion In our hospital-based cohort study MetS was associated with the aggressiveness of PTC. This association was still significant after adjusting for age, sex, TSH, and BMI.