Coronavirus Disease 2019 and the Thyroid - Progress and Perspectives.

Hidefumi Inaba,Toru Aizawa

doi:10.3389/fendo.2021.708333

Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) is currently a tremendous global health problem. COVID-19 causes considerable damage to a wide range of vital organs most prominently the respiratory system. Recently, clinical evidence for thyroidal insults during and after COVID-19 has been accumulated. As of today, almost all non-neoplastic thyroid diseases, i.e., Graves’ disease, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, subacute, painless and postpartum thyroiditis, have been reported as a complication of COVID-19, and causality by the virus has been strongly implicated in all of them. Similar thyroid problems have been reported in the past with the SARS-CoV outbreak in 2002. In this review, we briefly look back at the reported evidence of alteration in thyroid functionality and thyroid diseases associated with SARS-CoV and then proceed to examine the issue with COVID-19 in detail, which is then followed by an in-depth discussion regarding a pathogenetic link between Coronavirus infection and thyroid disease.

Highlights

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2 infection had broken out in China in December 2019 and rapidly spread all over the world creating a global pandemic [1]
Lania et al reported that 58 out of consecutive 287 (20%) patients with COVID-19 hospitalized in non-ICU beds developed thyrotoxicosis possibly provoked by systemic inflammation or immune activation induced by COVID-19 [24] (Supplementary Table 4)
The case histories reported in the literature indicate that thyroidal disorders associated with COVID-19 such as Subacute Thyroiditis (SAT), painless thyroiditis (PT), Postpartum Thyroiditis (PPT) are usually self-limiting, and Graves’ Disease (GD) and Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis (HT) can be treated with thiamazole and L-T4, respectively

Summary

Introduction

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection had broken out in China in December 2019 and rapidly spread all over the world creating a global pandemic [1]. SARS-CoV virus has not been found in the thyroid gland [37] and, primary hypothyroidism in this patient may or may not have been a consequence of the direct viral attack on the thyroid follicular cells. The non-thyroidal-illness syndrome (NTIS) due to severe acute respiratory distress in SARS-CoV infection has been implicated [38] (Supplementary Table 1).

Results

Conclusion