Survival high for young thyroid cancer patients from Chernobyl
More than a quarter of a century after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, many children and teenagers who developed thyroid cancer due to radiation are in complete or near remission, according to a recent study.

Following the April 26, 1986 explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the former Soviet Union, the number of children and teenagers diagnosed with differentiated thyroid cancer spiked in Ukraine, Belarus, and western areas of Russia. Most of the patients developed the papillary subtype of differentiated thyroid cancer. Although this cancer tends to be more aggressive in children than adults, nearly all of the patients tracked in the study responded favorably to treatment. The study was published in Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (2013; doi:10.1210/jc.2013-1059).

"Even though some patients did not receive optimal treatment initially, the vast majority went into remission after receiving state-of-the-art radioiodine treatment and follow-up care," said the study's lead author Christoph Reiners, MD, of the University of Würzburg, Germany. "Many patients recovered from advanced cancers. Of this group, 97% had cancer spread to the lymph nodes, and 43% had cancer metastasize in the lungs."
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