Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Ischemic colitis (IC) is a disorder characterized by a decrease in blood flow of the large intestine. Many factors can contribute to decreased blood flow in the arteries supplying the large intestine, such as nonocclusive causes like hypertension and atherosclerosis and occlusive causes like embolism from myocardial infarction. With Ischemic colitis’s high mortality rate and its association with many cardiovascular diseases, it’s important to understand comorbidities that might lead to these events. Thyroid hormone is a hormone that affects not only metabolism and energy expenditure, but also cardiac function. Thus, thyroid dysfunction might play a role in the development of ischemic colitis. This study aims to find and assess comorbidities like thyroid dysfunction associated with admission for ischemic colitis.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study of adults with IC listed as the primary ED diagnosis from 2005 to 2014 using the Nationwide Readmission Database (NRD). The characteristics of the IC-related ED visits were analyzed.

Results: The estimated number of ED visits with a primary diagnosis of IC from 2005-2014 was 541,267 people. Our results showed that the mean age of the cohort was 62 +/- 14 years, suggesting that most patients affected with ischemic colitis are elderly. 88,497 out of 541,267 ischemic colitis patients were found to have hypothyroidism, amounting to 16.35% of the ischemic colitis population.

Conclusions: The results suggest that Hypothyroidism and ischemic colitis may be associated, perhaps through thyroid hormone’s effect on cardiovascular homeostasis. Thyroid hormone has a major role in cardiac contraction, angiogenesis, vascular function, structure, as well as mitochondrial function. Dysfunction of the thyroid hormone pathway can lead to cardiac impairment, hypertension, and heart failure. All these events may lead to decreased blood flow in the vasculature, hypoperfusion to the organs, and subsequently ischemic colitis.