Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The clinical significance of subclinical thyroid diseases is debated.

Design: To assess the relationship between undiagnosed subclinical hypothyroidism (USH), health indicators (HI) and cardiovascular risk factors (CVRF), this cross-sectional study was conducted in 1100 adults representatives of non-institutionalized Catalan population (44.5% men; mean age: 44.8±15.2 years) in Catalonia (Spain); 40 USH (18 men) and 1060 euthyroid (474 men). Patients were given a 165 items health questionnaire (one specifically asking about depression – D or anxiety – A), collected the anthropometric parameters, TA, and FC and glucose, total cholesterol and fractions, triglycerides, urate, ferritin, sideremia, transferrin, adiponectin, insulin, thyrotropin (TSH), free thyroxine (FT₄), thyroperoxidase (TPOAb) and thyroglobulin (TgAb) antibodies were measured. Obesity was diagnosed if BMI>30 kg/m² and diabetes mellitus (DM), high blood pressure (HTA) and HC if there saw knowledge of them and/or patients took specific drugs and/or basal glucose >126 mg/dl, TA >135/85 mmHg, or cholesterol >200 mg/dl, respectively. Student t-test, ANOVA, χ² and a logistic regression model with USH as the dependent variable and the rest as independent were used for the statistical analysis. A P value <0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results: D or A, obesity, DM and HC were more frequent in the USH group (P=0.01; 0.01; 0.00; 0.01), while smoking was less frequent (P=0.02). In this group, age and LDL-C were higher (P=0.02; 0.05). USH was only associated with depression or anxiety (OR 2.57; 95% CI 1.16–5.37), with the fact of not smoking (OR 3.14; 95% CI 1.25–9.6) and HC (OR 2.16; 95% CI 1.1–4, 4).

Conclusions: Depression or anxiety, not being a smoker and hypercholesterolemia are the variables independently associated with undiagnosed subclinical hypothyroidism.