I was just looking at a recent post about the relevance of suppressed tsh, especially if this is the only way you can achieve an acceptable level of circulating thyroxine (eg in central hypo), and I wondered if it’s possible to synthesise tsh. Does anyone know?
Best to all
Sorry, I have no idea. I tried looking it up, but couldn't find anything about it being synthesised anywhere except in the body.
I'm not sure if giving TSH to someone who has it suppressed would help, or if it's ever been tried.
Does anyone know?
I found an experiment from the 50s where they gave people synthetic thyroid releasing hormone.
TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) is produced by the pituitary gland, TRH (thyroid releasing hormone) is produced by the hypothalamus of the brain. TRH acts on the pituitary which responds by producing TSH, which acts on the thyroid gland to produce more hormone.
I looked for "Synthetic TRH" and it is used medically or in research, but the only articles found so far are too technical for me at the moment.
I think it would only help if the problem was in the hypothalamus (congenital or through injury?)
Yes-the findingof the experiment was that if the pituitary was intact, pituitary hormones rose, but if it was compromised, they didn’t, so it was being proposed as a way to distinguish between secondary and tertiary deficiencies. I suppose it never went anywhere because the wonderful Tsh test came along xx
Do you have a link to the experiment? Sounds interesting!
I’ll try to find it again x
If you google Synthetic Thyrotropin Releasing Hormone- A Potent Stimulator
It’ll come up faster than my linking powers will send it.
From 1971 so made irrelevant by the Tsh hegemony
Thanks, will have a look when I can x
Got it! nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJM19...
I don’t know if this is how Trh is used now to test for Tsh deficiency. I am rather hoping to find out in the not too distant future! X
I found something that was reviewed in 2018. It seems that TRH has more than one use
drugs.com/pro/thyrotropin-r...
Excellent!
I read lots of papers that say central hypo is vanishingly rare, but they seem to have next to no interest in diagnosing it, so the rarity comes as no great surprise.
‘Central hypothyroidism is often missed’- well, it will be if you don’t look for it. So blasé about leaving people to the joys of untreated thyroid deficiency! XG
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