2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Studies on the latent thyroid dysfunction in university freshman.

Research Project

Project/Area Number	23500801
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Section	一般
Research Field	Applied health science
Research Institution	Okayama University
Principal Investigator	OGURA Toshio 岡山大学, 保健管理センター, 教授 (80214097)
Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha)	KOGA Hikari 岡山大学, 保健管理センター, 助教 (90596131)
Project Period (FY)	2011 – 2013
Keywords	甲状腺 / 自己抗体 / 潜在性機能異常 / 甲状腺乳頭がん
Research Abstract	We checked the history of thyroid disease and screened thyroid hormone, anti-thyroid autoantibody, and goiter in university freshman of 2,257 people. A history of thyroid disease was found in 0.4% of them, most of which were female students. Goiter was found in 0.8% and 4.6% of male and female students, respectively, and thyroid papillary carcinoma was found in three of them. Compared to male students, female students had higher prevalence of autoantibody (5.1%). New and recurrent cases of Graves' disease have been found in one female student each through the screening test of this study. There were no cases of low thyroid hormone levels, whereas cases with high thyroid hormone levels accounted for more than half. In order to find at an early stage the young subjects with latent thyroid diseases, active screening of neck palpation, blood tests, and thyroid ultrasound examination should be considered, since those often have no symptoms.