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[Prevalence of thyroid disorders in patients diagnosed with depression]
M J Muñoz-Cruzado Poce1, A J García Navas, M L Moreno Gómez
1Centro de Salud Rodríguez de Arias, San Fernando, Cádiz. madu@comcadiz.es
Objective:
To determine the prevalence of thyroid disorders in patients diagnosed with depression.
Design:
Cross-sectional descriptive study (random sampling).
Setting:
Primary care, San Fernando (Cádiz).
Patients:
Patients diagnosed with depression (DSM IV criteria) at the San Fernando Mental Health Centre.
Measurements And Main Results:
108 patients were studied (95% CI; p = 11 +/- 5%), in whom figures for TSH in the blood, free T3 and T4 and anti-thyroid antibodies (anti-thyroglobulin and anti-TPO) were determined. We found a predominance of women among the patients studied (5:1) and only found thyroid disorders in women (100%). The age group with greatest frequency of depressive illness was from 50 to 59. 73.1% of all the thyroid disorders were found in the 30-59 age group. We detected a high number of depressive patients with unknown thyroid analytic disorder (24.1%) and a relevant prevalence of depressives with thyroid auto-immune disease (16.6%), especially due to positive anti-TPOs, exceeding the prevalence in previous studies. There was less hypothyroidism than expected (7.4% against 8-14%), although more than the estimated figure for the population as a whole (5%).
Conclusions:
Indiscriminate thyroid tests on depressive patients, as a screening method, can be dispensed with. Given the results of anti-thyroid antibodies and the few studies of prevalence in the depressive population, it seems appropriate to conduct studies with a bigger sample and meta-analysis previous research.