A new study on thyroid functionality may prove helpful for doctors to decide when to treat people with an underactive thyroid gland that doesn’t have any worrying symptoms.

Almost 27 million people in the US have some sort of thyroid problem and more than half of these people have not been diagnosed with the disease, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists says.

According to Dr. Anne R. Cappola, who is an assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania, “At this point, it is not clear how to manage older people with subclinical thyroid dysfunction.” The findings of the study will be published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in its Sept.30 issue.

In this study, the researchers followed more than 3,000 people with an average age of 12 years and they monitored thyroid activity through blood levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH). Then they looked for a link between thyroid activity and heart failure.

“We found a clear indicator of danger in our study,” said Cappola.

A THS level of 4.5mU/liter is considered normal levels while in this study the participants with TSH reading of 10 or higher had double chance of getting a heart failure and people with 4.5 and 10 had no effect.

Tiredness, excessive weight and puffy look are often seen in people with low thyroid function. However, this phenomenon is not common in older people.

This article is the property of http://www.HealthHype.com
Copying and publishing any article from our site is strictly NOT allowed.