Treatment
Hypothyroidism caused by Hashimoto's Thyroiditis is treated with thyroid hormone replacement agents such as levothyroxine or desiccated thyroid extract. A tablet taken once a day generally keeps the thyroid hormone levels normal. In most cases, the treatment needs to be taken for the rest of the patient's life. In the event that hypothyroidism is caused by Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, it is recommended that the TSH levels be kept under 3.0. As long as the patient's thyroid is active, the body will continue to attack it, and this can wreak havoc on the patient's TSH levels and symptoms.
Preliminary studies have suggested a correlation between Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and Celiac sprue. While it has not been rigorously explored, there is anecdotal evidence that a gluten-free diet may reduce the autoimmune response responsible for thyroid degeneration. A study published in January 2012 compared a group of confirmed Celiac's patients to a control group of healthy individuals, starting a gluten-free diet and continuing for one year. While there was a higher occurrence of thyroiditis found amongst the Celiac group, there was no reduction in their level of anti-TPO antibody, improvement in thyroid function, or change in thyroid volume reduction after one year without gluten. The study mentions that its results disagree with other reports.
Read more about this topic: Hashimoto's Thyroiditis
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“Judge Ginsburg’s selection should be a model—chosen on merit and not ideology, despite some naysaying, with little advance publicity. Her treatment could begin to overturn a terrible precedent: that is, that the most terrifying sentence among the accomplished in America has become, “Honey—the White House is on the phone.””
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)