- 著者
- Chizuko Kuriyama Kouki Mori Yoshinori Nakagawa Saeko Hoshikawa Hiroshi Ozaki Sadayoshi Ito Minoru Inoue Masahiro Ohta Katsumi Yoshida
- 出版者
- The Japan Endocrine Society
- 雑誌
- Endocrine Journal (ISSN:09188959)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- pp.1009240485, (Released:2010-10-15)
- 被引用文献数
- 4 4
Red blood cell (RBC) zinc (Zn) concentration reflects a patient’s mean thyroid hormone level over the preceding several months. The aim of this study was to examine whether RBC Zn level can be used as an indicator to distinguish painless thyroiditis-associated transient hypothyroidism (TH) from permanent hypothyroidism (PH). RBC Zn level was measured in 30 untreated PH patients with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and 7 untreated TH patients with painless thyroiditis in whom preceding transient thyrotoxicosis had been confirmed. RBC Zn concentration was significantly lower in TH patients than that in PH patients. There was a positive correlation between RBC Zn and serum TSH, and the latter was clearly lower in TH patients than that in PH patients. However, RBC Zn level was again significantly lower in TH patients than PH patients despite of the comparable serum TSH levels in both groups when RBC Zn was evaluated in patients with serum TSH levels of less than 50 mU/L. Thus TH patients could be identified with RBC Zn measurement, allowing us avoidance of unnecessarily prolonged T4 administration to them.