This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Endocrine Diseases  • Thyroid/ Parathyroid Diseases  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

The Uncertain Natural History of Thyrotoxic Patients Treated With Combination Interferon Alfa-2 and Ribavirin—Reply

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

In reply

We appreciate Dr Tran’s interest in our article¹ and welcome this opportunity to clarify the issues raised by him. Exclusion criteria for our study included a personal history of thyroid disease as well as current or prior treatment of thyroid disease. In addition, baseline thyrotropin (TSH) levels were obtained on all study subjects at week 0. Patients with abnormal TSH levels were excluded from the study.

We agree that there is a lack of consensus regarding how to screen or how often to screen for thyroid disease during interferon and ribavirin therapy. Some authors have suggested that screening for thyroid disease with a complete history and physical examination, TSH levels, and antithyroid peroxidase antibodies should be performed in all patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection prior to therapy.² In addition, these authors recommended treatment of thyroid disease followed by TSH levels every 2 to 6 months during . . . [Full Text of this Article]

AUTHOR INFORMATION
Saurabh Mehandru, MD; Edmund J. Bini, MD, MPH

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLES

The Uncertain Natural History of Thyrotoxic Patients Treated With Combination Interferon Alfa-2 and Ribavirin
Huy A. Tran
Arch Intern Med. 2005;165(9):1072.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Incidence of Thyroid Dysfunction During Interferon Alfa-2b and Ribavirin Therapy in Men With Chronic Hepatitis C: A Prospective Cohort Study
Edmund J. Bini and Saurabh Mehandru
Arch Intern Med. 2004;164(21):2371-2376.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Increased Risk of Autoimmune Thyroid Disease in Hepatitis C vs Hepatitis B Before, During, and After Discontinuing Interferon Therapy
Luisa Fernandez-Soto, Amalia Gonzalez, Fernando Escobar-Jimenez, Rafael Vazquez, Esther Ocete, Nicolas Olea, and Javier Salmeron
Arch Intern Med. 1998;158(13):1445-1448.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT