May 25, humanity celebrates World Thyroid Day. This small organ plays a very important role in our life. It is so important that if he refuses to work or removes a person, he should take thyroid hormones until the end of his days, instead of those that should have been delivered to him naturally.
Thyroid and health
According to doctors, today only 60% of diseases are diagnosed. thyroid gland. In other cases, people live without even knowing about their problem – with poor health, swelling, overweight (or its inexplicable decrease), chronic drowsiness (or, on the contrary, psyche-killing activity), deterioration of vision, etc. As a result, they increase the risk of infertility, osteoporosis, heart disease and blood vessels. It is also known that women suffer from thyroid diseases 5-8 times more often than men.
One consolation: a large part of thyroid disease is surprisingly easily treated with medicines that do not require the application of any super-efforts in order to comply with the administration schedule. Health at the same time so rapidly returns to normal, that at first a person with hypothyroidism feels his recovery as a miracle.
If we are talking about such serious illnesses as a malignant tumor of the thyroid gland, then in this case there is no reason for panic. In the vast majority of cases of thyroid cancer, the prognosis is good – the five-year survival rate is 98.1%.
Secrets of Thyroid Disease
Every year science brings us new data on thyroid diseases. For example, Basedow’s disease (also known as diffuse toxic goiter or thyrotoxicosis) is known to mankind throughout its history due to the characteristic appearance of patients. In this disease, the gland tissue grows abnormally, forming a goiter and leading to an increased secretion of hormones. It turned out that the culprit for the formation of goiter is a protein called “vascular endothelial growth factor” (VEGF). It is he who provokes the formation of a multitude of blood vessels in the area of the expanding thyroid, nourishes its growing tissues and makes them more dense. This means that it is necessary to develop a medicine that would act against this protein – and one of the most common diseases of the thyroid gland could be successfully treated.
And in April of this year, endocrinologists from Florida (USA) stated that an increased level of free thyroxine (one of the thyroid hormones) increases the risk of atherosclerosis in older people, regardless of other factors determining the likelihood of cardiovascular diseases.
By the way, studies show that with age it is necessary to adjust the dose of the hormone taken. In old age, levothyroxine in high concentrations increases the risk of fractures in both men and women. Moreover, the female negative effects of levothyroxine are combined with osteoporosis, which further increases the fragility of the bones.
It turned out also that hypothyroidism (lack of gland hormones) is dangerous during pregnancy – 2-3% of women carrying a child face this problem. The fetus cannot independently produce thyroid hormones and should receive them from the mother. With a lack of hormones, the risk of premature birth and stillbirth increases. But it is enough to diagnose hypothyroidism in time and start giving levothyroxine to the expectant mother in order to completely solve this problem.
Do I need screening?
In the field of diagnosis of diseases of the thyroid gland, everything is far from being as clear as it seems at first glance. In recent years, in the field of oncology, there is a massive reassessment of the importance of regular screening of the human body for various cancers. Thyroid screening did not avoid this approach.
Back in 2014, doctors started talking about a “thyroid cancer epidemic.” According to experts at that time, the incidence of this disease has increased 3 times since 1975, from 4.9 to 14.3 cases for every 100 thousand people. And in May of this year, the United States Working Group on Disease Prevention (USPSTF) stated that screening of the thyroid gland with ultrasound and palpation is either practically useless or even somewhat harmful. According to calculations, over the past 10 years, the incidence of thyroid cancer is growing at 4.5% per year – this is faster than for any other cancer. Surprisingly, at the same time, despite the increase in the number of diagnoses, the mortality from thyroid cancer has not changed.
Experts believe that the cause of growing indicators – overdiagnosis, or “epidemic diagnoses.” This means that doctors speak of thyroid cancer in the presence of very small tumors that do not harm a person for the rest of their lives and in principle do not need to be removed. But if there is a diagnosis, then there must be a cure. And cancer treatment is a severe blow to the whole body, and in this case we are talking about the harm of overdiagnosis. Therefore, recently, doctors are increasingly offering to leave the tumor alone and just watch it so that you can take emergency measures at any time.
By the way, one of the unusual, but very effective methods for detecting tumors of the thyroid gland is “animal diagnostics” – sniffing diseases with the help of a specially trained dog. The first diagnostician of benign and malignant thyroid tumors in urine tests was Frankie Shepherd from the University of Arkansas. The sensitivity of this diagnostic method was 86.7%, and the specificity – 89.5%. That is, Frankie in the course of the experiment correctly determined the presence of the disease in 9 cases out of 10.
New treatments
One of the most progressive areas of treatment of diseases of the thyroid gland is the creation of new tissues of the body from stem cells. So far, scientists have managed to “persuade” only mouse embryonic stem cells to develop into thyroid cells. A gene has been discovered that can “turn on” and “turn off” key processes for such a transformation. Perhaps in the near future, scientists will be able to grow in their laboratories a full-fledged thyroid gland.