Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 1997 Sep;12(9):544-50.
doi: 10.1046/j.1525-1497.1997.07109.x.

Do traditional symptoms of hypothyroidism correlate with biochemical disease?

G J Canaris  1 , J F Steiner, E C Ridgway
Affiliations

Do traditional symptoms of hypothyroidism correlate with biochemical disease?

G J Canaris et al. J Gen Intern Med. 1997 Sep.

Abstract

Objective: Hypothyroidism often remains undetected because of the difficulty associating symptoms with disease. To determine the relation between symptoms and biochemical disease, we assessed symptoms and serum thyroid function tests, concurrently, for patients with and without hypothyroidism.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Setting/patients: Seventy-six newly diagnosed case patients with overt hypothyroidism and 147 matched control patients identified through outpatient laboratories in Michigan and Colorado.

Measurements and main results: Patient symptoms were assessed by questionnaire. Case patients reported a higher proportion of hypothyroid symptoms than did control patients (30.2% vs 16.5%, p < .0001). Univariate analysis identified three significant predictors of an elevated level of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) (p < .05), and 13 symptoms which, when they had changed in the past year, were reported more often by case patients with hypothyroidism than by control patients (p < .005). Individuals reporting changes in 7 or more symptoms were significantly more likely to have hypothyroidism (likelihood ratio [LR] = 8.7, 95% confidence interval [CI] 3.8, 20.2); those reporting changes in 2 or fewer symptoms were less likely to have hypothyroidism (LR = 0.5, 95% CI 0.4, 0.7).

Conclusions: In this sample, the number of hypothyroid symptoms reported was directly related to the level of TSH. The association was stronger when more symptoms were reported. Symptoms that had changed in the past year were more powerful than symptoms reported present at the time of testing. This suggests that traditional symptoms are valuable when deciding which patients to test for hypothyroidism.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 2
Figure 2
Proportion of case and control patients reporting “changed” symptoms.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

  • Symptoms of hypothyroidism.
    Nardone DA. Nardone DA. J Gen Intern Med. 1998 Mar;13(3):218. doi: 10.1046/j.1525-1497.1998.00063.x. J Gen Intern Med. 1998. PMID: 9541382 Free PMC article. No abstract available.

References

    1. Evered DC, Ormston BJ, Smith PA, Bird T. Grades of hypothyroidism. BMJ. 1973;1:657–62. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Larsen PR, Ingbar SH. The thyroid gland. In: Wilson JD, Foster DW, editors. Williams Textbook of Endocrinology. Philadelphia, Pa: WB Saunders Co; 1992. pp. 357–487. In. eds.
    1. Wartofsky L, Ingbar SH. Diseases of the thyroid. In: Wilson JD, Braunwald E, Isselbacher KJ, et al., editors. Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine. 12th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill; 1991. pp. 1692–712. In. eds.
    1. Golding DN. Hypothyroidism presenting with musculoskeletal symptoms. Ann Rheum Dis. 1970;29:10–4. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gavin LA. The diagnostic dilemmas of hyperthyroxinemia and hypothyroxinemia. Adv Intern Med. 1988;33:185–204. - PubMed

Publication types