Early schizophrenia and TSH levels.

[diogenes]

Wherever one looks nowadays, there's something new in the thyroid field, either direct or indirect. This paper links schizophrenia and TSH levels. It is very long and detailed, but for any hardy souls I append it below as a downloable paper.

Redefining the Cut-Off Ranges for TSH Based on the Clinical Picture, Results of Neuroimaging and Laboratory Tests in Unsupervised Cluster Analysis as Individualized Diagnosis of Early Schizophrenia

February 2022

Journal of Personalized Medicine 12(2):247

DOI: 10.3390/jpm12020247

mdpi.com/2075-4426/12/2/247

[tattybogle]

Thankyou for this ..... think i'll save it for a rainy day.

[Charlie-Farley]

Ooooo brill. I read an article in the National Geographic once about genetically identical twins, one of whom went onto develop schizophrenia. It debunked the idea that it was a purely genetic problem. Will be interesting to have a read. Might have to print that off earlier than end of season. 🤔

[humanbean]

Anyone doing a search for "nutritional deficiencies in schizophrenia" will get a lot of links on the subject.

It is shocking to me that people with schizophrenia could have been put on really powerful mind-altering drugs when what might have been necessary was vitamin supplements. But of course supplements can't be patented and don't make as much money as drugs.

People with bipolar disorder have been found to have low thyroid and low nutrients too, I think.

[shaws Administrator in reply to humanbean]

I agree wholeheartedly with you. How many people have been misdiagnosed and given medications that may harm them rather than 'heal' them?

[humanbean]

I don't understand this sentence in the abstract :

The diagnostic process still takes into account the extreme ranges of the accepted reference values for serum TSH since the concentration of free thyroxine in the serum does not change by definition.

Of course Free T4 changes with TSH (in most people) so what do they mean by saying it doesn't change by definition?

The results indicate the need to lower the upper cut-off values for TSH among patients with early psychosis, which is related to the potential clinical significance of the obtained values both in the field of clinical evaluation and neuroimaging and laboratory evaluation parameters.

Why not change the upper cut-off values for TSH in everyone, to help reduce the risk of psychosis in the first place?

[diogenes Remembering in reply to humanbean]

There is no significant relationship between TSH and FT4 in healthy people. A graph of FT4 v TSH follows a flat line. So I suppose they want to see if in early schizophrenia, this non-relationship becomes instead a meaningful one.

[paradime in reply to diogenes]

I do not understand how you can say no relationship between TSH and fT4 in healthy people. Granted that where the feedback is wrong properly, both levels will remain relatively stable, but the whole point of TSH is that as thyroid hormone levels drop, pituatory secretes more TSH, signalling the thyroid to produce more hormone.

[diogenes Remembering in reply to paradime]

I am not talking about the individual, but the statistical relationship betwen TSH and FT4 over the healthy range of a patient panel. Each individual has their own unique relationship but the overall population relationship balances out so that the overall relationship is nil. This applies to FT3 as well.

[paradime in reply to diogenes]

So you mean the 'set points' that each person adopts vary across the well population.

If I understand you correctly you are not denying the relationship that TSH goes up as T4 goes down. Have I got that correct?

[diogenes Remembering in reply to paradime]

Yes that is still true. Medicine in thyroidology has mistakenly diagnosed the individual as a statistic (i.e. anywhere in range is OK )as such rather than diagnosing the individual as a a unique sample with their own personal biological details.

[tattybogle in reply to humanbean]

it was very complex, so i may have misremembered/misunderstood , but i think they found higher rates of 'First episode of psychosis' were associated with the lower TSH group ie. TSH 1 - 2.5 So i don;t think they were saying higher TSH = more psychosis risk

('Multiple episodes' were associated with higher group TSH 2.5-4.2, but there's loads of other stuff going on ....and then i got confused.

Bits of it were very interesting, especially about fT3 , but the exclusion criteria for the study meant none of the patients studied had any autoimmune disease at all , so i wasn't very sure how enlightening this study really is for most of us.

[HashiFedUp]

The link between mental health and diet/lifestyle is well established. There’s a fascinating talk on TedTalks ( youtube). youtu.be/3dqXHHCc5lA(Not working as expected?)

[eeng]

Very interesting. It's fascinating to see a TSH of >4 referred to as 'extremely high' and graphs of FT3 (often referred to by GPs as 'meaningless') correlated against other things as part of serious medical research.