A Study to Estimate the Prevalence of Subclinical Hypothyroidism in Newly Detected Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus at a Tertiary Care Hospital in Chennai

BACKGROUND: The worldwide prevalence of diabetes has risen over the past two decades from 30 million cases in 1985 to 285 million cases in 2010. The international diabetes federation projects that 552 million will have diabetes by the year 2030. Also hypothyroidism, another common endocrine disorder is also rising parallely. Many studies have been done to show the relation between these two disorders but the prevalence of thyroid dysfunction in newly detected diabetes had not been done. So my primary aim is to find out the prevalence of subclinical hypothyroidism in recently diagnosed diabetics since it largely goes undetected and associated with significant adverse effects. METHODS: A cross sectional study is carried out in 140 patients of newly diagnosed diabetics attending outpatient department in the Department of Medicine and in the Department of Diabetology, kilpauk medical college and hospital and is used to estimate the prevalence of thyroid dysfunction in them. RESULTS: In the study, 35 patients (25%) of newly detected diabetics had thyroid dysfunction .In patients with abnormal thyroid function, 33(23.6%) had subclinical hypothyroidism,1 (0.7%) had overt hypothyroidism and remaining 1(0.7%) had subclinical hyperthyroidism. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of subclinical hypothyroidism in newly detected diabetics is found to be 23.6%.It is higher in females than in males. In the study ,it was found there is significant correlation between thyroid dysfunction and female gender , BMI ,family history of diabetes and dyslipidemia and no significant correlation between Age, SHT, CAD and thyroid dysfunction