Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence of thyroid disorders in patients diagnosed with depression. DESIGN: Cross-sectional descriptive study (random sampling). SETTING: Primary care, San Fernando (Cádiz). PATIENTS: Patients diagnosed with depression (DSM IV criteria) at the San Fernando Mental Health Centre. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: 108 patients were studied (95% CI; p = 11 +/- 5%), in whom figures for TSH in the blood, free T3 and T4 and anti-thyroid antibodies (anti-thyroglobulin and anti-TPO) were determined. We found a predominance of women among the patients studied (5:1) and only found thyroid disorders in women (100%). The age group with greatest frequency of depressive illness was from 50 to 59. 73.1% of all the thyroid disorders were found in the 30-59 age group. We detected a high number of depressive patients with unknown thyroid analytic disorder (24.1%) and a relevant prevalence of depressives with thyroid auto-immune disease (16.6%), especially due to positive anti-TPOs, exceeding the prevalence in previous studies. There was less hypothyroidism than expected (7.4% against 8-14%), although more than the estimated figure for the population as a whole (5%). CONCLUSIONS: Indiscriminate thyroid tests on depressive patients, as a screening method, can be dispensed with. Given the results of anti-thyroid antibodies and the few studies of prevalence in the depressive population, it seems appropriate to conduct studies with a bigger sample and meta-analysis previous research.