Endocrine Abstracts

Graves’ orbitopathy (GO) is a serious, progressive eye condition seen in patients with autoimmune thyroid disease. GO is characterized by inflammation and swelling of soft orbital tissues. Adipose tissue produces cytokine mediators called adipokines. The present study focuses on the relationship between serum levels of selected adipokines in patients with GO, comparing them with the control group, and uniquely describes the effect of high-dose systemic corticosteroids (HDSC) on their levels. For the purposes of this study, we collected blood samples before and after the treatment with HDSC from 60 GO patients and 34 control subjects and measured serum levels of adiponectin, AIF-1, A-FABP and FGF-21. Levels of adiponectin significantly differed among the three study groups (ANOVA P= 0.03). AIF-1 levels were also highly significantly different among the study groups (ANOVA p<0.0001) with the highest value in GO patients after HDSC treatment, which was, however, not statistically different to the value in patients before HDSC treatment (P= 0.82). We did not observe any statistically significant difference in the levels of A-FABP or FGF-21 between controls and our patients, nor did HDSC treatment have an effect (ANOVA P= 0.19; P= 0.11). AIF-1 was in a multivariate analysis significantly associated with the presence/absence of GO after adjusting for clinical factors (age, sex, smoking and BMI) and level of TSH (Odds ratio 1.003, p<0.01). No other adipokine showed this association. This finding could enforce targeting macrophages in treatment strategies for GO since AIF-1 is considered as a marker of their activation. This work was supported by the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic – Conceptual development of research organization (FNOL, 00098892) and grant no. NU21J-01-00017. All rights are reserved.