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One of the most common prescription drugs in America – levothyroxine – is used by people with underactive thyroid glands, also known as hypothyroidism. However, a new study by Mayo Clinic researchers says the majority of people were initiated on levothyroxine for mild subclinical hypothyroidism or for no apparent thyroid dysfunction. These results, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, suggest significant overuse of levothyroxine.
Mayo researchers and colleagues examined retrospective, deidentified case data using the OptumLabs Data Warehouse, which includes insured and Medicare Advantage patients. For the ten years between 2008 and 2018, 58,706 patients began using levothyroxine and have full thyroid tests available before initiation. Among these patients, about half started levothyroxine for mild subclinical hypothyroidism and about a third started without the evidence of thyroid dysfunction.
The researchers stated that “Frequent initiation of levothyroxine in patients with mild subclinical hypothyroidism is at odds with evidence demonstrating no significant impact of levothyroxine replacement on measures of health-related quality of life, thyroid-related symptoms, depressive symptoms, fatigue or cognitive function.”
“Our data also suggest that a significant proportion of adults initiating levothyroxine do so when thyroid hormone levels are within the normal range,” says Juan P. Brito, M.D., Mayo Clinic endocrinologist and first author of the study. “Since this is the first study to describe this potentially inappropriate levothyroxine use, our findings need to be corroborated by subsequent studies.”
Read the rest of the article on Discovery's Edge.
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