Correlation between thyroid peroxidase activity and histopathological and ultrastructural changes in various thyroid diseases.

A morphological and biochemical study was performed on thyroid tissue with various thyroid diseases. The thyroid peroxidase (TPO) activity of normal thyroid tissues ranged from 2.6 to 7.0 mGU/mg DNA. The activity was low in adenomas and extremely low in carcinomas, and there was no significant relationship between the histological subclassification of follicular adenomas (simple, colloid, oxyphil) and TPO activity. The activity was various in the cases of chronic thyroiditis, ranging from non-detectable to 9.8 mGU/mg DNA, and the TPO activity showed a close correlation with the degree of lymphoid cell infiltration of the diseases. In the seven cases of Graves' disease, the values were high, though the elevation was not so remarkable in three cases which had already been euthyroid or slightly hypothyroid after long-term treatment. By means of subcellular fractionation, more than 50% of peroxidase activity was shown to be localized in the microsomal pellets, and this result well coincided with the electron microscopic findings of prominent development of rER.