Abstract: Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine gland malignanct tumor. Numerous studies have found that the content of peripheral blood circulating RNA in various cancer types is aberrantly expressed, which could be a potential biological diagnostic marker and therapeutic target. Tissue-specific messenger RNA has a dysregulated expression and may be used for the diagnosis and residual/metastatic detection of thyroid cancer. Recent studies have showed that non-coding RNA (ncRNA) could act as oncogene or tumor suppressor gene in bacteria, fungi and mammals. It plays a regulatory role in occurrence and development of tumors and stably exists in peripheral blood. It is hopeful that it will become a new marker for diagnosis of tumors. This review introduces some latest research progress on circulating RNA associated with thyroid cancer; and emphatically discuss the role of mRNA, microRNA (miRNA), long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) and circular RNA (circRNA) in thyroid tumorigenesis and metastasis.

Key words: Thyroid tumor, Circulating RNA, mRNA, Non-coding RNA