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Prospective multicentre study on the prediction of relapse after antithyroid drug treatment in patients with Graves' disease

Abstract. Graves' disease is an autoimmune disease characterized by a course of remission and relapse. Since the introduction of antithyroid drug treatment, various parameters have been tested for their ability to predict the clinical course of a patient with Graves' disease after drug withdrawal. Nearly all these studies were prospective and often yielded conflicting results. In a prospective multicentre study with a total of 451 patients, we investigated the significance of a variety of routine laboratory and clinical parameters for predicting a patient's clinical course. Patients who had positive TSH receptor antibodies activity at the end of therapy showed a significantly higher relapse rate than those without (P< 0.001). However, the individual clinical course cannot be predicted exactly (sensitivity 0.49, specificity 0.73, N = 391). The measurement of microsomal (P=0.99, sensitivity 0.37, specificity 0.63, N = 275) or thyroglobulin antibodies (P= 0.76, sensitivity 0.18, specificity 0.84, N = 304) at the end of antithyroid drug therapy did not show a statistically significant difference in the antibody titre between the patients of the relapse and those of the remission group. Additionally, HLA-DR typing (HLA-DR3: P=0.37, sensitivity 0.36, specificity 0.58, N = 253) was proven to be unsuitable for predicting a patient's clinical course. Patients with abnormal suppression or an abnormal TRH test at the end of antithyroid drug therapy relapse significantly more often (P< 0.001) than patients with normal suppression or normal TRH test. Patients with a large goitre also have a significantly (P< 0.001) higher relapse rate than those with only a small enlargement. The sensitivity and specificity values of all these parameters, however, were too low to be useful for daily clinical decisions in the treatment of an individual patient. This is also true for the combinations of different parameters. Though the highest sensitivity value (0.94) was found for a combination of the suppression and the TRH test at the end of therapy, the very low specificity value (0.13) for this combination reduced its clinical usefulness.

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