Long-term interferon beta-1b therapy for MS: is routine thyroid assessment always useful?
The risk of thyroid disease seems related to IFN beta-1b treatment during the first year only, particularly in patients with preexisting thyroiditis. Furthermore, incident thyroid dysfunction is generally transient and mild in degree. Indeed, we recommend a routine systematic thyroid assessment only in patients with baseline thyroiditis. During the first year of therapy, serum thyroid-stimulating hormone measurement should suffice as first line test; a systematic thyroid assessment is only useful for those patients with incidental and persistent dysfunction. Further studies with many patients will be necessary to confirm our suggestions as broad clinical guidelines.
The adiponectin levels may be involved in the mechanism responsible for high TG levels in obese and diabetic patients. These abnormalities can be reversed by RYGB.