Purpose
To determine primary systemic and immune thyroid status in hispanic patients debuting with thyroid eye disease (TED).
Methods
Retrospective, descriptive, transversal and comparative study.<br /> Thyroid status based on TSH levels, antithyroglobulin (TG Ab) and antithyroperoxidase (TPO Ab) levels and clinical activity score (CAS) were recorded for each patient at their first visit. Other relevant clinical and demographic data were obtained from the clinical records.
Results
60 patients (36 women and 24 men) were eligible for this study. 28 patients (47%) were hyperthyroid (17 on inflammatory/active phase and 11 non-inflammatory/non active), 28 (47%) were euthyroid (20 on active phase and 8 non-active) and only 4 (6.6%) were hypothyroid (1 active and 3 non-active) at presentation.<br /> From the active phase patients (n= 38), 9 had positive TPO Ab (23%) while 11 had negative TPO Ab (28%), 7 had positive TG Ab (18%) and 13 had negative TG Ab (34%). From the non-active patients (n= 22), 3 had positive TPO Ab (13%), 4 had negative TPO Ab (18%), 5 had positive TG Ab (22%) and 3 had negative TG Ab (13%).<br /> A Spearman correlation test showed no evidence of significant correlation between TSH and antibodies levels regarding inflammatory activity as evaluated using the CAS classification.
Conclusions
A distinctive, non previously reported distribution regarding endocrine and immune status was found in Hispanic TED patients, which reveals that as high as 47% of primary TED patients were euthyroid at the time of diagnosis. Interestingly, no correlation was found between active TED and the immune status of the patients regarding TPO and TG antibodies. Prospective studies with larger samples are warranted to confirm these findings.