Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: Thyroid autoimmunity has been proposed as a risk factor for impaired health-related Quality of Life (HRQoL), depression and anxiety, though evidence is still limited. The aim of the current study is to assess the association of thyroid autoimmunity with quality of life in patients with benign thyroid disease.

Design: A cross-sectional study was implemented, that included consecutive patients with benign thyroid diseases who visited the outpatient clinics of the Department of Endocrinology, ‘Hippokration’ General Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece, between September 2016 and June 2017. Patients were excluded if they had a thyroid cancer or if they were not able to communicate in Greek. The Greek, cross-cultural validated, version of ThyPRO questionnaire was used, as it comprises a reliable and validated instrument to measure thyroid-related quality of life. The 84 questions of ThyPRO are categorized in 13 scales that involve: goiter, hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism and eyes symptoms, tiredness, cognitive impairment, anxiety, depressivity, emotional susceptibility, cosmetic complaints and impaired social, daily and sex life. The scales were all scored and the final scores were transformed to a scale from 0 to 100. Lower scores reflect a better thyroid-related quality of life, whereas higher scores reflect a worse quality of life. Thyroid hormones were measured and thyroid autoimmunity was assessed in all patients while their thyroid disease history was also recorded. IBM SPSS was used for Statistical Analysis.

Results: Two hundred and three (n=203) consecutive patients (183 women and 20 men) with benign thyroid diseases were included in the study. Of them, 81 patients (39.9%) had Hashimoto thyroiditis. When compared with patients with benign thyroid diseases but no thyroid autoimmunity, patients with Hashimoto thyroiditis had surprisingly lower scores in the impaired sexual life scale (26.6±3% vs 34.8±3% respectively, P=0.05) but no difference in all other scales.

Conclusions: The current study did not demonstrate significant differences between patients with Hashimoto thyroiditis and patients with other benign thyroid diseases in regard to patient-reported quality of life, questioning the role of thyroid antibodies per se, on the quality of life.