Hashimoto's thyroiditis

Hashimoto's thyroiditis is a chronic autoimmune disease in which immune cells damage the thyroid gland. It often reduces thyroid hormone production and causes hypothyroidism.

Thyroid peroxidase: An enzyme that helps produce thyroid hormones by iodinating and coupling tyrosine residues. Antibodies against this enzyme are common in Hashimoto's thyroiditis and help identify thyroid autoimmunity.
Thyroid-stimulating hormone: A pituitary hormone that stimulates the thyroid to produce and release thyroid hormones. Its level typically rises when Hashimoto-related hormone deficiency reduces feedback to the pituitary.
Autoimmunity: An immune response directed against the body's own cells or molecules. Hashimoto's thyroiditis is a tissue-specific form of this broader failure of self-tolerance.
Myxedema: A severe form of hypothyroidism marked by tissue changes from accumulated glycosaminoglycans and, in crisis, impaired consciousness. Untreated advanced hormone deficiency from Hashimoto's can rarely progress to myxedema coma.
Graves' disease: An autoimmune disease in which stimulating antibodies activate thyroid-stimulating hormone receptors, usually causing hyperthyroidism. It is the major autoimmune contrast: immune activity usually drives hormone excess rather than gland failure.
Thyroglobulin: A protein made by thyroid follicular cells that serves as the precursor and storage matrix for thyroid hormones. Antibodies against thyroglobulin can accompany the immune response that damages thyroid tissue.
Free thyroxine: The unbound fraction of thyroxine circulating in blood, available to enter tissues. Measuring free thyroxine helps determine whether thyroid damage has caused hormone deficiency.
Immune tolerance: The immune system's restraint from attacking the body's own molecules and cells. Loss of tolerance to thyroid antigens permits the autoimmune response in Hashimoto's.
Goiter: An enlargement of the thyroid gland, arising from diverse structural or hormonal causes. Inflammation and compensatory stimulation can enlarge the thyroid in Hashimoto's.
De Quervain thyroiditis: A usually painful, self-limited thyroid inflammation often following a viral illness and causing transient hormone release. Unlike Hashimoto's, this thyroiditis is typically acute, painful, and not a chronic autoimmune process.

Linked from 7 pages