Women with Autoimmune Thyroiditis have Lower Reproductive Life Span or Not? A Cross Sectional Study

Background: Autoimmune diseases are a main cause of primary ovarian insufficiency. This study wasdesigned to elucidate the relationship between ovarian reserve and antithyroid peroxidase antibodiesin women of different ages. Methods: 98 women in a crosssectional study was conducted at the infertility Center of ShirazUniversity of Medical Sciences, Hazrate Zeinab Hospital, from September 2018 to March 2019. Womenwith infertility and thyroidstimulating hormone (TSH) gt; 3mIU/L were included in the study withconvenience sampling. Data were collected by a form containing demographic characteristics, thyroidhormones, and ovarian reserve data. Participants were categorized based on the negative or positiveantithyroid peroxidase (antiTPO) antibodies. According to a pilot sample, and possible dropout of20%, the sample size was determined to be 49 cases in each group. The results were compared betweengroups using SPSS, version 22. All statistical comparisons were performed using the ttest, and thedata are presented as the mean±SD. Pvalues less than 0.05 were considered significant.Results: 49 women were analyzed in each group. There was no significant difference between thegroups in the mean age (P=0.42), body mass index (BMI) (P=0.34), duration of infertility (P=0.99),mean prolactin (P=0.66), TSH (P=0.17), thyroxine (T4) (P=0.87) and folliclestimulating hormone(FSH) levels (P=0.14). Ovarian reserve characteristics: antral follicular count (AFC) and antiMüllerianhormone (AMH) levels in antiTPO positive group were 10.61±7.29 and 1.98±2.38, respectively, andAFC and AMH in anti TPO negative group were 16.46±6.38 and 2.94±2.22, respectively. There weresignificant differences between the two groups on AFC (P lt;0.001) and AMH (P=0.04).Conclusion: Patients with autoimmune thyroiditis were at higher risk for decreased ovarian reserve.They should consider their lower reproductive life span during their childbearing years.