Prevalence of Thyroid Disorders in Patients of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Background:Diabetes has become a major health challenge worldwide. Various studies have found that diabetes and thyroid disorders mutually influence each other and both disorders tend to coexist.

Objective: To find out the prevalence of thyroid disorders in patients of type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Material and Methods: The study was conducted on 200 patients of type 2 diabetes mellitus aged between 40-70 years. All the patients were evaluated for thyroid dysfunction by testing thyroid profile (T₃, T₄&TSH). The correlation of prevalence of thyroid disorder with gender distribution, age distribution, HbA1C, duration of diabetes, hypertension, family history of thyroid disorder, BMI, usage of OHA's and insulin and dyslipidemia was then done. The observations and interpretations were recorded and results obtained were statistically analyzed.

Results: There was a high prevalence (16%) of thyroid disorders in patients of type 2 diabetes mellitus, most common was subclinical hypothyroidism (7.5%) which was further found to be more in females, elderly patients, patients with uncontrolled diabetes i.e. HbA_1C values ≥7 or patients on insulin and patients with BMI <30.

Conclusions: Screening of thyroid dysfunction should be done in all diabetic patients especially in patients with poor diabetic control.