Giulia Brigante, ECE 2023: The challenges of treating patients with hypothryroidism
Hypothryroidism is a is a chronic condition in which you have an underactive thyroid where it does not produce enough thyroid hormones. touchENDOCRINOLOGY were delighted to speak with Dr Giulia Brigante (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy) about the challenges of treating patients with hypothryroidism.
The abstract ‘RANDOMIZED DOUBLE-BLIND PLACEBO-CONTROLLED TRIAL ON LEVOTHYROXINE AND LIOTHYRONINE COMBINATION THERAPY: THE LEVOLIO STUDY‘ was presented at the European Congress of Endocrinology (ECE), 13-16 May 2023.
Questions
- What are the challenges of treating patients with hypothryroidism? (0:20)
Disclosures: Giulia Brigante is a consultant for Prolevi Bio.
Support: Interview and filming supported by Touch Medical Media Ltd. Interview conducted by Shanice Allen.
Filmed in coverage of the European Congress of Endocrinology (ECE) Annual Meeting
Click here for more content on thyroid disorders.
Transcript
I’m Giulia Brigante. I’m an endocrinologist. I work as a researcher at the Unit of Endocrinology of the University of Moderna and Reggio Emilia in Italy.
What are the challenges of treating patients with hypothryroidism?
The treatment of hypothyroidism is theoretically quite simple because it is based on the administration of thyroid hormone, thyroxine, which then is activated at the tissue level by deiodinases. But in real life, this mechanism doesn’t seem to be equally efficient in all tissues and in all subjects. Clinical practice and also several studies demonstrated that up to ten, twenty percent of hypothyroid patients treated with this hormone complain of hypothyroidism symptoms despite normal serum TSH levels. We still have to understand which patients should need something more than levothyroxine E alone to recreate a physiological thyroid situation.
Subtitles and transcript are autogenerated.
