Consumption of thyroid medications as an indicator of increase of thyroid morbidity in Latvia from 2011 to 2014
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2019-08-01
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Abstract
The most common autoimmune disorders with clinically opposite manifestations are hypothyroidism in Hashimoto's thyroiditis and hyperthyroidism in Graves' disease. The healthcare burden of thyroid disease is substantial, resulting in substantial health care costs. The aim of the present analysis is to assess the use of thyroid medications in Latvia from 2011 to 2014 by age and gender. Our study used reimbursed medication prescriptions data, collected by the National Health Service of Latvia. The main indicator was the number of prevalent users of thyroid medications each year from 2011 to 2014, stratified by age and gender. From 2011 to 2014, the number of thyroxine users per 100 000 revealed a statistically significant increase in all age and gender groups, except in 0- to 9-year-old girls. The number of Thiamazole users among men increased in the age group from 40 to 89 years and in women age groups above 49 years. Increasing sales of both thyroid hormones and antithyroid medications are also observed in Estonia and Lithuania, indicating that growing thyroid morbidity is an issue in the whole region. The substantial increase in number of patients highlights the necessity for national guidelines on the use of thyroid function tests and standards of medical care.
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Funding Information: EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 634453; project EUthyroid. The authors thank the EUthyroid project leader Henry Völzke and the work package leader Betina H. Thuesen for designing, planning and managing the project and, in particular, morbidity data collection. Publisher Copyright: © 2019 Ieva Kalere et al., published by Sciendo 2019.
Keywords
Hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism, Levothyroxine, prescribing data, Thiamazole, 3.2 Clinical medicine, 3.3 Health sciences, 1.1. Scientific article indexed in Web of Science and/or Scopus database, General
Citation
Kalere, I, Strele, I, Miglinieks, M, Repša, I, Pildava, S, Romanovs, M, Pirags, V & Konrade, I 2019, 'Consumption of thyroid medications as an indicator of increase of thyroid morbidity in Latvia from 2011 to 2014', Proceedings of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, Section B: Natural, Exact, and Applied Sciences, vol. 73, no. 4, pp. 407-410. https://doi.org/10.2478/prolas-2019-0064