Evaluation of thyroid volume in patients with systemic sclerosis; what
did we find?
Abstract
Introduction: Systemic sclerosis is a multisystemic disease. Thyroid
involvement in systemic sclerosis is an issue that can be ignored. Our
study aimed to evaluate the decreased thyroid volume in SSc. Also, we
aimed to show the relationship between patients’ thyroid volume and
severity score, clinical and laboratory parameters. Method: This was a
single-center, cross-sectional study. Eighty-eight patients were
included in the study. A radiologist evaluated patients’ thyroid volumes
by ultrasonography. Demographic and clinical characteristics of the
patients were recorded. Skin thickness was evaluated by the modified
Rodnan skin score and the disease severity by the Medsger severity
score. Findings were analyzed statistically. Results: Thyroid volume was
in the atrophic range in 53.4% of the patients. There was a significant
negative correlation between thyroid volume and mRSS, MSS, and disease
duration. Logistic regression analysis showed that modified Rodnan skin
score and disease duration were risk factors for thyroid atrophy.
Conclusions: Many studies point out that thyroid autoantibodies are a
cause of thyroid dysfunction in patients with SSc. However, in most of
these studies, thyroid volume was not evaluated. As a result of our
study, we saw that the major cause of thyroid dysfunction in our SSc
patients was thyroid atrophy. Also, we observed that thyroid atrophy was
more common in patients with ILD. We would like to draw attention to the
fact that thyroid dysfunction and volume changes increase with the
disease’s duration and severity in systemic sclerosis.