Relationship between Body Iron Status and Thyroid Profile in an Adult Population: A Hospital Based Study

Abstract

Introduction: Several studies done on humans and animal have described the relationship between body iron and thyroid status. It has been found in many studies that iron metabolism and thyroid metabolism are closely inter connected as iron is a component of many enzymes including Thyroid Peroxidase (TPO) which takes part in the initial two steps in thyroid hormone biosynthesis. Aim: The study was designed to evaluate the status of total body iron in patient of hypothyroidism Materials and Methods: A hospital based study was carried out by Department of Biochemistry, Subharti Medical College in association with Endocrine and Metabolic OPD of Chatrapati Shivaji Subharti Hospital, Meerut, India. A total of 100, age and sex matched controls and 100 hypothyroid patients, 20 to 60 years of age group, were included in the study. Blood samples were collected in plain vials for fT3, fT4, TSH, TIBC, Iron and ferritin estimation on next day under overnight fasting state. Statistical Analysis: Data analysis was done by using unpaired‘t’ test. Continuous variables were expressed as mean ± SD, A p-value<0.05 was considered significant. Result: Haematological indices for iron status showed that all subjects having low thyroid profile were iron-deficient. TIBC, and ferritin were significantly decreased in subjects having altered thyroid profile. Values of TIBC, iron, ferritin, fT4 and fT3 were significantly lower in hypothyroid cases as compared to control (p-value <0.05). Conclusion: Our study was found to have a relation of body iron status with hypothyroidism, but a further large scale study will be required to consolidate our findings.

Keywords

• ferritin
• thyroglobulin
• thyroid hormone
• thyroid peroxidase
• total iron binding capacity