Beyond Thyroid Hormone: Other Medications You Should Know About
Introduction
There is a great deal of research, discussion, and controversy
concerning thyroid hormone medications used to treat hypothyroidism.
We do our best on this Web site to keep you up to date on new research
about these drugs.
But there are a number of other medications you should know about
if you have a thyroid problem. Some are medications that are used
to control the symptoms and signs of hyperthyroidism, but there
is a much larger group of medications for thyroid-related disorders
which may occur in anyone with auto-immune thyroid disease, including
Graves’ disease, hypothyroidism, and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.
Antibodies against one’s own tissues cause many of these
disorders. Examples are juvenile (Type I) diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis,
pernicious anemia, and the white skin spots of vitiligo. But there
are other conditions which may or may not be autoimmune in nature
and also occur with increased frequency in patients with auto-immune
thyroid disease. These include migraine, prematurely gray hair,
bipolar depression, osteoporosis, Sjogren’s syndrome, rheumatoid
arthritis, and inflammations of the intestine (ulcerative colitis
and Crohn’s disease (an inflammation of the small intestine).
In this portion of our Web site you will learn about medications
available for these conditions. Often there may be more than one
drug available. In that case we will try to educate you about the
characteristics of the different medications, so that you will have
an understanding about the reasons for which your physician may
choose a particular drug for you.
We appreciate the support of the pharmaceutical firms funding this
portion of our Web site. They have enabled us to give you this extra
information about medications used by thyroid patients. A list of
all the corporations that have supported this part of our Web site
can be found in our list of sponsors. They can also be reached by
clicking your computer’s cursor on the name of any highlighted
drug or product.
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