Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Factors affecting health related quality of life (HRQOL) in Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (HT) are controversial and research on the topic is limited. This study aimed to evaluate the factors that may affect HRQOL and admitting symptoms in a group of patients with HT.

Methods: For the evaluation of HRQOL, SF-36, Beck anxiety scale and Beck depression scale were performed on subsequent 57 cases with HT admitting to outpatient clinic of Endocrinology department of Baskent University Hospital. Also, according to the admitting symptoms of the patients, they were asked to score between 0 and 10 expressing severity for each of the nine most frequent symptoms. Thyroid function tests, thyroid autoantibodies were studied, and thyroid sonography was performed to each patient.

Results: The most frequent symptoms mentioned were dysphagia, dyspnea, feeling of swelling in the neck, difficulty in collared clothing, snoring, night sweating, headache, lightheadedness, and pain in the neck. According to SF-36 form assessment, there was a correlation between thyroid volume and mental health (P<0.05; r=−0.31) and physical role limitation (P<0.05; r=+0.30) subscales. As for general symptom evaluation, headache and light-headedness were more severe in patients who were not on L-T₄ than those on L-T₄ (P<0.05 and P<0.01 respectively). Corelation analysis revealed a positive relation between the symptom of difficult breathing and thyroid volume (P<0.01; r=+0.39).

Conclusion: Determining almost no relation between HRQOL scales and thyroid hormone levels, but detecting some relations between some scales and thyroid volume may be meaningful in HT cases, i.e. possible contributions of morphological factors. The final results of our ongoing study may reveal us more on the topic.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.

Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sector.