Application of an immunoradiometric assay for thyrotrophin in evaluation of thyroidal and nonthyroidal disease states

Abstract

We evaluated an immunoradiometric assay for serum TSH (IRMA-TSH) and compared it with established indices of thyroid function in 208 patients with either frank thyroid disease, conditions of abnormal thyroxine protein binding, or conditions which are known to produce discordant thyroid results, viz. pregnancy or estrogen treatment and nonthyroidal illness (NTI). As expected, a wide scatter of TSH results was found in treated thyroid disease: 53 patients (53%) from both groups (initially hypo- or hyperthyroid) had TSH values less than 0.5 mU/l, but only one was considered to be clinically mildly toxic. All the pregnant, estrogen-treated and abnormal thyroxine protein-binding patients had TSH results within the reference range 0.5-6.0 mU/l, except one familial dysalbuminemic hyperthyroxinemia (FDH) patient (T4 level, 178 nmol/l) lost to follow-up with a TSH level of 8.5 mU/l, and one euthyroid, low-TBG patient being treated inappropriately with thyroxine, with a TSH level less than 0.5 mU/l. All the untreated thyrotoxic patients and 15 (26.3%) of the NTI patients had TSH results of 0.5 mU/l or lower. Because of this high incidence of low TSH levels in euthyroid NTI, we cannot recommend this IRMA-TSH as the initial test of thyroid function.