Barry
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
My wife's ME onset coincided with having a nasty bug whilst recovering from a thyroid operation, and being as thyroid function controls metabolism (implying energy conversion), I'm trying to understand if some (or all!) of my wife's ME-like symptoms really are all down to ME, or in part at least, to badly managed thyroid levels due to her hypothyroidism. Could it be, for instance, that her ME might have improved somewhat over the years, but that improvement masked by sub-optimal thyroid T4/T3 levels?
This is not a new study, but is something I came across whilst endeavouring (as a non-scientist) to better understand thyroid/pituitary/hypothalamus functioning. This bit of the conclusion suggests there is still much science does not understand regarding the relative merits of just T4 replacement therapy, versus combination T3/T4 replacement therapy. Including here, given the energy-deficit consequences of hypothyroidism overlap in many ways with ME - not sure about PEM though.
This is not a new study, but is something I came across whilst endeavouring (as a non-scientist) to better understand thyroid/pituitary/hypothalamus functioning. This bit of the conclusion suggests there is still much science does not understand regarding the relative merits of just T4 replacement therapy, versus combination T3/T4 replacement therapy. Including here, given the energy-deficit consequences of hypothyroidism overlap in many ways with ME - not sure about PEM though.
https://academic.oup.com/labmed/article/41/6/338/2657554However, because of our incomplete knowledge of thyroid signaling biology and the complexities of assessing the efficacy of thyroid hormone replacement (Figure 2), it remains to be definitively proven whether combination therapy should replace standard treatment for hypothyroidism.