Maternal smoking and thyroid dysfunction

Thyroid disorders are common in women of reproductive age and the development of disease seems to depend on both genetic and environmental factors. Smoking is understood to be one of a number of environmental factors influencing the occurrence of thyroid disease but studies have been inconsistent. One of the limitations in previous studies on the association between smoking and the risk of thyroid dysfunction has been  the inclusion of relatively low numbers of exposed cases.

Using Danish nationwide registers, Andersen et al. aimed to investigate the association between maternal smoking and the subsequent risk of maternal hyper- and hypo-thyroidism by conducting a population-based cohort study. Their results show that smoking reduced the risk of hypothyroidism and increased the risk of hyperthyroidism, adding to further evidence of an association between smoking and thyroid dysfunction.

Read full article at Andersen et al. (2014) Clinical Endocrinology 80; 307-314; DOI: 10.1111/cen.12279