Assessment of Thyroid Function in Pregnant Women From Rimal Health Center, Gaza City

Abstract

Background. Pregnancy is associated with significant but reversible changes in thyroid function tests results, which are as a result of a normal physiologic state. Pregnancy influences thyroid function and may bring to light mild and latent disorders. This study focused on thyroid hormones as the human fetal thyroid does not secrete thyroid hormones until approximately 12 weeks of gestation, the fetus is dependent until that time on a supply from the maternal circulation. Thyroid dysfunction has been related to obstetrical complications such as premature delivery, gestational hypertension, preeclampsia, and placental abruption. Objective: to assess the maternal thyroid function in the first trimester of pregnant women from Rimal health center-Gaza city. Materials and methods. A cross sectional study was designed with 90 normal pregnant women who were randomly selected from the first trimesters attending Rimal Health Center and 80 randomly selected non-pregnant healthy female controls. Age range in both groups was 18-40 years. Thyroid function tests were carried out by measuring serum levels of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), free thyroxin (FT4), and free triiodothyronine (FT3). They were measured using Microparticles Enzyme Immunoassay (MEIA). SPSS was used to analyse obtained data. Results: The results showed that there was a significant increased between the non pregnant women group and pregnant women for FT4 and FT3 where the p-value is 0.04 and 0.030 respectively. the mean TSH levels of pregnant women was lower than the mean level of non pregnant but did not show significant difference in first trimester compared with non-pregnant women. Also there was a significant statistical difference between the groups of different age for FT4 and FT3 where the p- value was 0.034 and 0.038 among the non pregnant women group. On the other hand, there was no statistically significant relationship between thyroid function in pregnancy and family history of thyroid problems, genetic disease, and hypertension among women in the study sample.