Temporal trends in the clinical presentation of Graves' orbitopathy: a single-center retrospective study

Graves' ophthalmopathy (GO) is an autoimmune disease that affects orbital soft tissues and represents the most common extrathyroidal manifestation of Graves' disease (GD). The European Group of Graves' Ophthalmopathy (EUGOGO) has attempted to shed light on the European epidemiological picture of GO, suggesting that GO in newly diagnosed patients in recent years has a trend towards a less severe clinical presentation. There are no studies that focus this issue on the population of our area; we aimed to evaluate the trend of GO clinical presentation in our outpatient clinic through an observation period of 10 years.

We compared 55 consecutive patients, 11 males (F) and 44 females (M), who came to our observation from January 2005 to December 2006 [Group 1 (G1)], with 56 patients, 15 males, and 41 females, who were referred to us from 2015 to 2016 [Group 2 (G2)]. We studied the following putative predictors of GO presentation and severity: thyroid function, smoking, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, time from GO diagnosis to referral to our thyroid centre (TGOD), sex and age.

GO severity was significantly reduced in G2 vs. G1 (p = 0.04). TGOD ≥ 3 months was related to clinical characteristics of GO (severity and Clinical Activity Score ≥ 4) and was an independent predictor of GO severity (p = 0.01). The other variables evaluated had no independent effects.

We found that GO severity at presentation was significantly reduced over a ten-year observation period (2005-2006 vs. 2015-2016) in GO patients referred to our tertiary thyroid centre. TGOD ≥ 3 months was an independent predictor of GO severity.