Serum concentrations of anti-thyroid peroxidase and anti-thyroglobulin antibodies in children and adolescents without apparent thyroid disorders
Introduction
Antibodies to antigenic components of the thyroid gland, such as thyroid peroxidase (TPO) and thyroglobulin (TG) are known to be the hallmark of autoimmune thyroid disease [1]. Moreover, both autoantibodies were found to be diagnostic indicators for thyroid diseases, e.g. Hashimoto's thyroiditis, postpartum thyroiditis and Graves' Disease [2], [3]. For the laboratory diagnostic of thyroid diseases and its interpretation, the knowledge of the overall prevalence of TPOAb and TGAb in peripheral blood of healthy subjects and its prognostic value is mandatory. While the diagnostic relevance of thyroid autoantibodies in adults is rather frequently discussed [4], their role in children and adolescents remains widely unclear [5]. However, there is no generally acknowledged way of obtaining and interpreting data of thyroid autoantibodies from young patients. Guidelines for establishing reference intervals for TPOAb and TGAb were established for adults only [5]. Data for the prevalence of thyroid antibodies in children and adolescents are scarce and studies mainly include small numbers of subjects [6]. Therefore, specific reference intervals for children have not been published so far. This study aims to investigate the prevalence of TPOAb and TGAb in children and adolescents without known thyroid disease in dependence on age and gender. In a following step it was investigated whether anthropometric and thyroid function associated serum parameters were correlated with the concentrations of both antibodies.
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Study participants
Blood samples of 841 newborns, infants, children and adolescents (396 girls, 445 boys) of Caucasian origin were measured. Age ranged from birth (cord blood) up to 20 years. Detailed information about the study group has been published recently [7]. The samples were obtained from three groups of subjects:
- 1)
521 children and adolescents from the Department of Otorhinolaryngology of the Leipzig University Hospital, admitted for minor surgical interventions.
- 2)
193 patients from the Paediatric Clinic of
Results
Serum samples of 841 children and adolescents were investigated. An overview about age, gender and thyroid hormones is given in Table 1.
Discussion
This cross-sectional study reveals age- and gender-dependent variation of TPOAb and TGAb values in infants, children and adolescents with apparently normal thyroid function. In detail: we observed that infants demonstrated increased antibody values up to 1 year of age. Whether the postpartal increase in antibody values is due to remaining maternal antibodies after transplacental transmission or by de novo immunoinduction remains unclear. Considering the half life of IgG with 21 days [9], the
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Gerold Schubert and Renate Förster for their excellent work on obtaining and evaluating the thyroid function of this study group. We also thank Silke Zachariae for her help considering statistical analyses of our data. Thanks are also due to all researchers, who so generously shared their findings, namely Klaus Zöphel.
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