Depression recovery undermined by thyroid condition

Main Category: Depression
Article Date: 16 Mar 2004 - 0:00 PDT


According to a study in Greece, an autoimmune thyroid condition could undermine the recovery of some patients with depression.

You can read about this in BMC Psychiatry.

Doctors could also use indicators of thyroid function to predict how well their patients should respond to the antidepressants they give them.

The researchers monitored 90 people. Thirty were healthy people while the other thirty had major depressions. All the 90 people were tested for thyroid function.

Some of the patients with depression had elevated levels of thyroid binding inhibitory immunoglobins in their blood. The levels of thyroid function indicators FT3, FT4 and TSH were normal.

If you have high levels of immunoglobins your thyroid gland function can be affected.

The researchers wrote 'Although thyroid gland dysfunction is not common in depression, there is evidence suggesting the presence of an underlying autoimmune process affecting the thyroid gland in depressive patients.

"The finding that depression often co-exists with autoimmune subclinical thyroiditis suggests that depression may cause alterations in the immune system, or that, in fact, it is an autoimmune disorder itself.'

The researchers re-assessed the patients after two years to see how well they had responded to treatment.

The higher the levels of thyroid hormone and thyroid binding inhibitory immunoglobin in their blood the less well the patients responded to treatment for their depressions.

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