Thyroid dysfunction in patients with confirmed COVID 19 and short-term outcomes

Abstract

Background: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a pandemic of the new millennium that has presented unprecedented public health challenges. Thyroid dysfunction caused by Covid-19 was transient, with nearly all cases regaining normal thyroid function within three months of infection. The aim of this work was to assess thyroid function in cases suffering from confirmed COVID 19 to determine if this infection is associated with abnormalities in thyroid function.Methods: This prospective research was conducted on 50 cases suffer from pneumonia caused by COVID 19 infection, all cases were adults, underwent clinical, laboratory assessment and chest computerized chest tomography, COVID 19 diagnosis was confirmed by reverse transcription-polymrase chain reaction.Results: There was a significant increase in TSH, fT3 & fT4 after three months of follow up. TSH (µIU/mL), Free T4 (ng/dL) and Free T3 (pg/mL) were (3.04 ± 0.923, 2.14 ± 0.591, 2.6 ± 0.69 respectively) for 45 Followed up patients. Conclusions: The current study showed that hypothyroidism seems to be associated with a worse prognosis. Our investigation demonstrated that abnormal thyroid functions were prevalent between cases with COVID-19, with a prevalence of up to 64%. The thyroid functions restored to normal levels after 2 months of COVID-recovery.