Research Article Increased Incidence of Thyroid Dysfunction and Autoimmunity in Patients with Vernal Keratoconjunctivitis

Copyright © 2014 Stefano Stagi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Hormones may play a role in the pathophysiology of vernal keratoconjunctivitis (VKC). An increased incidence of thyroid autoantibodies was recently observed in VKC, although there were no data on thyroid function. Two hundred and eighty-eight patients (202 males, 86 females; range 5.5 to 16.9 years) with VKC were evaluated and compared with 188 normal age- and sex-matched subjects. In all subjects, serum concentrations of free T4, TSH, thyroperoxidase, thyroglobulin, and TSHr autoantibodies were evaluated. In VKC, the family history of thyroid diseases showed no significant differences compared to the controls (9.4 versus 8.6%), whereas the family history of autoimmune diseases was significantly higher (13.2 % versus 6.3%