Endocrine Abstracts

Abstract

Important regulators of metabolism are thyroid hormones. They play an important role in the development and maturation of the central nervous symptom and their failure in the prenatal period leads to irreversible brain damage, however, their effect on the brain of an adult has not been fully studied. On the other hand, Hashimoto encephalopathy is associated with autoimmune thyroiditis. With the discovery of neurogenesis in the adult brain many recent studies have been focused on understanding the basic mechanisms controlling this process. Many neurogenesis regulatory genes not only transcribed but also translated into blood cells. The focus of our study was to analyze the transcriptional activity of neurogenesis regulatory genes in peripheral blood cells in patients with thyroid pathology.

Methods

We used the pathway-specific PCR array (Neurotrophins and Receptors RT² Profiler PCR Array, QIAGEN, Germany) to identify and validate neurogenesis regulatory gene expression in patients with thyroid pathology and control group.

Results

The results showed that GDNF, GFRA3, NGFR, NRG1, NTF3, NTRK1, NTRK2 significantly decreased their expression in patients with autoimmune thyroiditis with rising serum autoantibodies. The patients with primary hypothyroidism as a result of autoimmune thyroiditis and postoperative hypothyroidism had significantly lower expression of BDNF, CBLN1, FGF2, NGFR, NRG1, NTF3. The mRNA level of CNTFR, MEF2C was markedly decreased in the group of patients with postoperative hypothyroidism. ARTN, CNTF, PSPN, TFG, MT3, NELL1 did not change their expression in all groups of patients.

Conclusion

The finding indicates that a decrease of thyroid hormones and a high level of autoantibodies such as anti-thyroglobulin antibody and anti-thyroid peroxidase antibody influence the expression mRNA neurogenesis-regulated genes in patients with thyroid pathology.