Hemodialysis and thyroid disorders in chronic kidney disease patients at General Hospital of Douala, Cameroon

Abstract

Background: kidneys' physiology is related to thyroid hormone functions. They play an important role in certain pathways of these hormones. Therefore the decline in renal function is accompanied by changes in thyroid function. Thyroid abnormalities are described in chronic hemodialysis but insufficiently elucidated in our area. Hence our interest was to evaluate thyroid function in chronic kidney disease patients to point out the implication of hemodialysis on thyroid dysfunction in our population. Method: we carried out a thyroid function test on a chronic hemodialysed patient admitted at Douala General Hospital (DGH) nephrology service for chronic kidney failure. Samples collected were tested for thyroid hormones total T3 (triiodothyronine), total T4 (thyroxine), and TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone) using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technic. Epi Info was used for statistical analysis and 0.05 was significance threshold. Results: most of the participants were male-gendered (62.2%). The mean age was 49 years (41 ± 12.90) ranging from 20 and 79 years. Thyroid profile analysis of each patient highlighted 30 cases of hypothyroidism (36.59%) and 2 cases of hyperthyroidism (2.44%) out of the 82 enrolled subjects. Besides, our results showed that the duration of dialysis (P = 0.019) and old age (P = 0.04) were risk factors associated with hypothyroidism. Other factors such as gender and clinical history had no impact on the patient's thyroid status. Conclusion: our study indicated that hypothyroidism is a common endocrine disorder in patients who were going through chronic hemodialysis. A large population size study can be useful to set up systematic thyroid hormone checkups among chronic hemodialysis patients to improve population health conditions.