Who'd Have Thought It?

[rosetrees]

This is NOT an April Fool. It's a real study, that found - wait for it - if you administer T4 it raises the level of T4. Apparently it needed a funded study on horses to show that.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/160...

This is part of the stunning conclusion - "Administration of levothyroxine sodium increased serum tT4 concentrations ........"

[jimh111]

It does show that levothyroxine increased rT3, but without seeing the full paper it is difficult to interpret the results. I have found a lot of medical research to be sloppy, it seems to be done without any idea of what they want to discover.

Did they really give the poor mares 24, 48, 72, or 96 mg of L-T4? Horses are bigger than humans, but 96 mg rather than 96mcg? Perhaps the horses came from Troy?

[gabkad in reply to jimh111]

Wow! Talk about a cheap source of L-thyroxine! valleyvet.com/ct_detail.htm...

[humanbean in reply to gabkad]

Very difficult to dose for humans though. One twelfth of a teaspoon would give 1g of levo. And most patients would only need a tenth to a fifth of this. Accuracy would be impossible, I think. But I agree about the price, it's amazing!

[rosetrees in reply to humanbean]

We used to have a family friend who was an anaesthetist. She always said that if you were really ill you were better off seeing a vet. Seems little has changed.