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Article: Check Thyroxine Level at 12 Weeks After Start of ERT.(estrogen replacement therapy)
- Article from:
- Internal Medicine News
- Article date:
- September 15, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 International Medical News Group. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Estrogen therapy elicits a clinically significant decrease in serum free thyroxine in postmenopausal women with hypothyroidism, results of a small study suggest.
When estrogen is prescribed for postmenopausal women on thyroxine, serum thyrotropin levels should be measured after about 12 weeks, advised Dr. Baha M. Arafah of Case Western Reserve University Cleveland (N. Engl. J. Med. 344[23]:1743-49, 2001).
The study compared 11 euthyroid women and 25 women with primary hypothyroidism who were started on estrogen therapy. In the hypothyroid women, the mean serum free thyroxine concentration decreased from 1.7 ng/dL at baseline to 1.4 ng/dL at 12 weeks ...