During the past 6 years, immigration to Israel of 700,000 persons from the former Soviet Union (FSU) included about 140,000 from radiocontaminated regions of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia near Chernobyl. In Beer Sheva, a major center for immigrant absorption in Israel, a primary objective was to evaluate their health status and to refer them for care. 137Cs levels in 1228 men, women, and childre...

Advanced human thyroid cancers are densely infiltrated with tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) and this correlates with a poor prognosis. We used BRAF-induced papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) mouse models to examine the role of TAMs in PTC progression. Following conditional activation of BRAF(V600E) in murine thyroids there is an increased expression of the TAM chemoattractants Csf-1 and Ccl-2. ...

Previous studies have described high levels of polychlorobiphenyls (PCB), polybrominated diphenylether (PBDE), toxaphene, p,p'-dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), and p,p'-dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE) in the blubber of the harbour porpoise from the North Sea raising the question of a potential endocrine disruption in this species. In the present study, the thyroids of 57 harbour po...

The mutant BRAF (BRAF(V600E)) is the most common genetic alteration in papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTCs). The oncogenicity of this mutation has been shown by some genetically engineered mouse models. However, in these mice, BRAF(V600E) is expressed in all the thyroid cells from the fetal periods, and suppresses thyroid function, thereby leading to TSH elevation, which by itself promotes thyro...

Ectopic thyroid is a rare developmental anomaly of the thyroid gland which is defined as the presence of thyroid tissue at a site other than the pretracheal area. Nearly 1 to 3% of all ectopic thyroids are located in the lateral neck. Simultaneous submandibular ectopic thyroid tissue presenting with a functional orthotopic thyroid gland is extremely rare. In this article, we report a 37-year-ol...