Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Thyroid hormone replacement is one of the most commonly prescribed and cheapest treatments for a chronic disease. There have been recent changes in community prescribing policies in many areas of the UK that have changed patient access to necessary medications.Aim: To provide a picture of thyroid hormone usage in the UK and to survey patient opinion about current community prescribing policies for levothyroxine.Methods:...

Thyroid function changes with advancing age, however there is little good quality data available that characterises the extent of thyroid disease in the elderly, or the parameters of normal thyroid function in the ‘oldest old’. Reference ranges for serum TSH and free thyroid hormones based on unselected younger adults are currently applied uniformly to older individuals.The Newcastle 85+ study has collected health and lifestyle information from...