As some, few, or many of you might know one of my pet interests is childhood thyroid carcinomas.

When studying trends in the epidemiology of this disease in Newcastle UK, we began to suspect there are sex-specific and time trends that are not necessarily compatible with the known aetiologies of thyroid cancer.

The main risk is ionising radiation exposure. However, while there was some post-Chernobyl fallout in Cumbria, this does not explain sustained rises in areas of no fallout and no ground radon emission.

Lack of/excess of dietary iodine, and previous cancer treatment are also known aetiologies. There is some evidence that there may be insufficient dietary iodine in young people in this area (data from pregnancy studies), but this is not well explored. We also excluded people with secondary diagnoses from the study.

More intriguing to me is the possibility that there may be other, unknown, aetiological factors at work: genetic susceptibilties? Chemical exposures? Other things?

I am interested to know if there is anyone who has thoughts on this, who might be interested in discussing future routes of research, particularly across European areas of low net immigration and low radiation exposure. You can see a paper I recently published at

linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S095980490801054X

Particularly note the Discussion section where we talk about the Tyne and Wear results, and about the Middlesborough area. Interested in what people think of this!

Just an update - we've submitted a grant proposal on some of these issues... so keep your fingers crossed :-) will let you know what comes of it.

Great news Brooke! I will keep my fingers crossed for you! =)