Saeed Ahmed, Zubair Ahmed Khoso, Mohsina Noor Ibrahim, Maira Riaz, Misbah Iqbal Hanif, Jamal Raza.
Correlation of Thyroid Hormone Levels with Plasma Protein Levels in Severely Malnourished Children.
Pak Paed J Jan ;45(3):353-6.

Objective: To determine the correlation of thyroid hormones with serum total protein and albumin levels in severely malnourished children. Study Design: Cross sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: This study was conducted at department of Diabetes and Endocrinology at National Institute of Child Health, Karachi between 28th May and 30th November 2018. Material and Methods: A total of 115 malnourished children of age less than 5years were enrolled in the study. Thyroid hormones (T3, T4 and TSH), serum albumin and total protein level were estimated. Pearson correlation test was applied to see the significant correlation between thyroid hormones (T3, T4 and TSH) with serum albumin and total protein level. Results: Mean age of the children was 2.57 +- 0.96 years with moderate positive significant relationship of T3 (r=0.561, p-value <0.001) and T4 (r=0.356, p-value <0.001) with serum total protein level. While TSH (0.031, p-value 0.744) was weakly positive. Moderate positive significant relationship of T3 (0.510, p-value <0.001) with serum albumin level. While T4 (0.255, p-value 0.006) and TSH (0.23, p-value 0.811) was found to be weak positive. Conclusion: This study has reported positive correlation of thyroid hormone with serum total protein and albumin levels in malnourished children, which could be due to decrease protein intake in malnourished children. Thyroid hormone levels should be interpreted with relation to serum protein and albumin.

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