Autoimmune thyroiditis
| Autoimmune thyroiditis | |
|---|---|
| Classification and external resources | |
| Specialty | endocrinology |
| ICD-10 | E06.3 |
| MeSH | D013967 |
Autoimmune thyroiditis, (or Chronic Autoimmune thyroiditis), is a chronic disease in which the body interprets the thyroid glands and its hormone products T3, T4 and TSH as threats, therefore producing special antibodies that target the thyroid’s cells, thereby destroying it.
It may present with hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism and with or without a goiter.
Specialists separate autoimmune thyroiditis into two clinical categories.
1. If goiters are present, it is understood as Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis.
2. If the thyroid is atrophic, and does not present goiters, it is called atrophic thyroiditis.
It can also refer to Graves' disease. If the symptoms of thyroiditis appear in women after giving birth, it is called Postpartum thyroiditis.
The symptoms may vary depending on the thyroid function, i.e. hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism. Hyperthyroidism can cause sweating, rapid heart rate, anxiety, tremors, fatigue, difficulty sleeping, sudden weight loss, and protruding eyes. Hypothyroidism can cause weight gain, fatigue, dry skin, hair loss, intolerance to cold, and constipation. The effects of this disease may be permanent but can sometimes be transient. Symptoms may come and go depending on whether the person receives treatment, and whether the treatment takes effect.
Thyroid autoimmunity is familial. The disease is said to be inherited as a dominant trait since it has been reported that as many as fifty percent of the first degree relatives of patients with some type of autoimmune thyroiditis present with thyroid antibodies in serum. Some studies have even related it to chromosome 21 because of its high correlation with patients with Down’s syndrome and familial Alzheimer’s disease. This theory is controversial, since patients with Turner’s syndrome also present a high prevalence of autoimmune thyroiditis (up to fifty percent).
Autoimmune thyroiditis has a higher prevalence in societies that have a higher intake of iodine in their diet, such as the United States and Japan. Also, the rate of lymphocytic infiltration increased in areas where the iodine intake was once low, but increased due to iodine supplementation. “The prevalence of positive serum tests in such areas rises to over 40 percent within 0.5 to 5 years.”
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