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• Thyroid Eye Disease Association (TED)
• for professionals
• some more notes
• EUGOGO

Thyroid eye disease is described on the sites below. However, there has been tremendous progress in understanding the condition which is very important and not emphasised

• the eye disease is up to 7 times  worse in smokers. That is SEVEN times worse. So do try to stop! The figure relates to approximately 20 cigarettes a day.
  Passive smoking, that is if your husband smokes 20 cigarettes a day, means that you will get 25% of his smoke....so this if he smokes 20/day and you are in the same room much of the time, your eye disease will be THREE times as severe as if he did not smoke.
  
  
• The eye disease is due to TSH receptors on the surface of the cells surrounding your eyes. Why does this matter?
  TSH is thyroid stimulating hormone, and is made in your pituitary gland. The pituitary gland makes more TSH when the amount of thyroid hormone in your blood drops to very low levels.
  If anyone is short of thyroid hormone, that is if you have had radiation treatment or a high dose of anti-thyroid drugs, or you become short of it naturally, the pituitary gland makes more TSH.
  But the more TSH there is, the more that will reach the tissues around your eye, and then the more the muscles and fat around your eye will swell up, pushing your eye forward.
  This is because the TSH makes the cells swell up.
  You therefore need a low TSH level, or at least one that healthy people have. Therefore you will need blood checks to see that you have enough thyroid hormone in your bloodstream. By keeping the right amount of thyroid hormone in your blood your eyes are much less likely to swell up.
  If your thyroid hormone levels are low your doctor will prescribe more thyroxine tablets.
  
  
• Radioactive iodine may cause thyroid eye disease progression . Risks may be reduced by corticosteroid therapy starting just before the radioactive iodine. Radioactive iodine is best avoided with newly diagnosed disease (Graves disease) and active eye disease (Drug & Ther Bulletin 2006).

• Excellent article
• The condition is reviewed here in the BMJ (2004) and here.
• http://www.thyroid-info.com/articles/thyroideye.htm
• http://www.british-thyroid-association.org/ptinfo.TED.pdf
• http://www.thyroid-fed.org/members/TED.html
• Dundee

TEDCT
PO BOX 2954
CALNE
Wiltshire
SN11 8WR   (ENGLAND)

tel: 0844 8008 113        ted@tedct.co.uk   www.tedct.co.uk

• some more notes
• Mourits score
• there are reports of 'Triamcinolone administered as a periocular injection is effective in reducing diplopia and the sizes of extraocular muscles in TAO ophthalmopathy of recent onset. ..not associated with systemic or ocular side effects', see.
• EUGOGO