HYPERTHYROIDISM

Thyroid disorders are one of the common endocrine disorders. Their prevalenceis affected by many factors, especially environmental and nutritional ones. Objectives: Toascertain the seroprevalence of hyperthyroidism in clinically suspected hyperthyroid patients.Design: Descriptive cross-sectional study. Setting: Frontier Medical & Dental College,Abbottabad. Period: January to August, 2015. Methods: One hundred and twenty patientswere included in the study based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. Thyroid function tests(TSH, fT3 & fT4) were performed using enzyme linked immunoassay (ELISA) method. Results:There was preponderance of males in our study with male to female ratio of 1.4:1. Maximumpatients (56.67 %) were between the ages of 21-40 years of age, with mean age of studypopulation to be 32.09±13.01 years. The prevalence of hyperthyroidism was 15% based on theresults of thyroid function tests. There were 11 males and 7 females with male to female ratio of1.57:1 and mean age of hyperthyroid patients was 25.72± 8.27 years. The mean value of TSH,fT3 and fT4 was 0.038±0.025 mIU/L, 7.08±2.19 ng/mL and 25.25±6.30 μg/dL respectively inhyperthyroid patients as compared to 3.15±2.23 mIU/L, 2.05±0.88 ng/mL and 10.69±2.69μg/dL in euthyroid subjects. Conclusion: Thyroid disorders are not very rare among generalpopulation. TFTs provide a reliable way of ascertaining the thyroid function. As this is a hospitalbased study, field studies should be conducted to ascertain the true prevalence of thyroiddisorders in the community.