Endocrine Abstracts

JOINT1813

Introduction: Thyroid eye disease (TED) is the most common extraocular manifestation of Graves’ disease. Recent reports demonstrate that low serum vitamin D levels is associate with TED diagnosis. The aim of our study is to evaluate whether low serum vitamin D levels are associated with active thyroid eye disease and whether or not supplementation potentially improves the clinical course of the disease for patients with TED as an adjuvant treatment.

Material and Methods: We have recruited 115 patients with TED from the Outpatient Clinic of Autoimmune Endocrinopathies, Department of Pathophysiology of the University of Athens, Greece. The analyzed data were respectively collected from the patients’ medical record from the same investigator. We recorded a comprehensive personal and family medical history. Magnetic resonance imaging was performed in all patients. Serum vitamin D was measured for all patients. Patients already receiving vitamin D supplementation or received during the last 8 months were excluded from the study.

Results: Regarding demographic characteristics of study population mean age was 56.18 ±1.63 years, the majority of the patients (74.8%) were females and 82.8% were smokers. Median CAS was 3/7 (1-7) and 19.6% of study population presented with unilateral disease. Active disease was present in 58.3%. Regarding disease severity 26.6% had mild disease, 52.3% moderate to severe and 21.1% had severe-sight threatening TED. We conducted subgroup analysis and compared the above characteristics between patients with active and inactive disease. Mean 25(OH)vitamin D levels for patients with active TED were 25.82±10.15 ng/ml whereas for patients with inactive TED mean levels were 24.83±12,88 ng/ml (P = 0.677). Moreover, we compared all variables between patients with disease duration <6 years and ≥ 6 years in an attempt to establish clinical factors contributing to disease chronicity. Mean 25(OH)vitamin D levels for patients with disease duration <6 years were 24.79 ±11,68 ng/ml and for patients with disease duration ≥ 6 years were 28.12 ±9,07ng/ml (P = 0.261).

Conclusion: We found higher levels of serum vitamin D concentration in patients with active and therefore more severe TED. However, the comparison does not reach statistical significance. Similarly patients with longer disease duration have higher vitamin D levels. As a result, vitamin D supplementation in patients with active TED is not strongly indicated. Further prospective studies are required to determine which subgroup of TED patients will potentially benefit from vitamin D supplementation as an adjuvant treatment.