Thyroid hormone Levels in very preterm neonates and extremely preterm

Abstract

Introduction: The thyroid function of the pretern infant is altered by the relative immaturity of the hypothalamus-pituitary thyroid gland axis, along with other factors such as the incidence of diseases or the use of some drugs. Currently, there is controversy over normal levels of free thyroxine (FT4) in preterm infants. Our objective was to determine the distribution of FT4 and TSH values in newborn younger than 32 weeks or 1500 g of birth weight at 15 days of chronological age, in the neonatology Neonaservice at Dr. Hernán Henríquez Aravena Hospital, Temuco.

Patients and Method: Cross-sectional study; the results of FT4 and TSH from a database of 308 newborns, were analyzed, which were categorized into three gestational age ranges, 31-34, 28-30 and 23-27 weeks. It was used Pearson Chisquare for comparisons between categorical variables, and T-Test or ANOVA for categorical-variable ratios.

Results: Significant differences were observed between the average values of FT4 by gestational age ranges (p = 0.000), these were 1.13 ng/dl for the range of 31 to 34 weeks, 1.03 ng/dl for the range of 28 to 30 weeks and 0.92 ng/dl for the range of 23 to 27 weeks; we did not observe significant differences in TSH levels by gestational age categories (p = 0.663).

Conclusions: We established the distribution of FT4 and TSH levels in our population of very preterm and extremely preterm infants, finding differences with previous papers.