Sunday 13 September 2015

Thyroid hormones

The thyroid hormone strategy is something that should be more well known.  How many people here have tried this approach?  How long did it take for blood levels of T4 to drop into the therapeutic range as per Hercbergs?

I'll be uploading the most relevant studies to the Brain Tumor Library (in the "Therapies - human studies" folder).  The most recent study is this one:

Medically induced euthyroid hypothyroxinemia may extend survival in compassionate need cancer patients: an observational study

2 comments:

  1. Those taking high-dose tamoxifen may want to pay special attention to this strategy.

    Propylthiouracil-induced chemical hypothyroidism with high-dose tamoxifen prolongs survival in recurrent high grade glioma: a phase I/II study

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12680157

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  2. Hi Stephen,
    my wife has a hypothyroidism (hashimoto) already for years and was taking 100mg T4. We changed to T3 mid July. Around three weeks later we checked the blood counts. I have only the reference counts from february, but there is no reason that they changed significantly until we start the treatment.

    Old Counts 04.02.2015:
    TSH 1.55 mIU/l
    fT3 2.05 pg/ml
    fT4 1.42 ng/dl

    New counts 03.08.2015:
    TSH 3.40 mIU/l
    fT3 2.28 pg/ml
    fT4 0.23 ng/dl

    She is now on T3 for more than two months and had no problems or any typical hypothyroidism symtoms. For patients that are taking already T4 for hypothyroidism it might be a simple thing to change.

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