Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: To assess perceived health status in people with sub-clinical hypothyroidism (SCH) who may have physical and psychological symptoms of hypothyroidism, which could affect their health perceptions.Method: A cross-sectional survey was conducted involving 71 adults with SCH and no other chronic disease, age range 18 - 64 years. Patients completed the eight scales of the Short Form 36 Health Survey questionnaire version 2 (SF-36v2), a widely used t...

Objective: To assess quality of life (QoL) in people on therapy for hypothyroidism (T4 group) and to compare it with people with untreated sub-clinical hypothyroidism (SCH group).Method: A newly designed and validated tool, the 18-item ThyDQoL, measuring hypothyroid-specific QoL was completed in a cross sectional survey of the T4 group [n=103, mean age (SD) 55 (14.2) years, 17.5% males], which was similar in age and sex to the SCH group [n=100, mean age ...

Objective: To evaluate the psychometric properties of two new condition-specific questionnaires: (1) the 18-item ThyDQoL, an individualised patient-centred measure of perceived impact of hypothyroidism on QoL, and (2) the 15-item ThySC symptom checklist in which patients provide 'bother' ratings for common hypothyroid symptoms.Method: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 110 adults with clinical or subclinical hypothyroidism [mean age: 55.1 plus/m...

BACKGROUND: We have previously demonstrated that in weight losing gastrointestinal cancer patients appetite is poor despite low circulating leptin concentrations. One explanation for the apparent inability of these low circulating leptin concentrations to increase appetite might be a decrease in the leptin binding component resulting in high concentrations of 'free' biologically active leptin. The present study was designed to investigate this possibility, furthermore the effe...