Dietary Factors Associated with Plasma Thyroid Peroxidase and Thyroglobulin Antibodies

Abstract

The knowledge about dietary habits and their influence in the development of autoimmune thyroid disease is insufficient. The aim of this study was to analyse the association of dietary factors and plasma thyroid peroxidase antibodies (TPO-Ab) and/or thyroglobulin antibodies (Tg-Ab). The study enrolled 1887 participants originating from the South Croatia. Participants with elevated plasma TPO-Ab and/or Tg-Ab were defined as cases (n = 462) and those with TPO-Ab and/or Tg-Ab within referent values were defined as controls (n = 1425). Dietary intake was evaluated according to a food frequency questionnaire containing 58 food items. Principal component analysis was used to group food items into dietary groups. We used logistic regression analysis to examine dietary groups associated with positive plasma TPO-Ab and/or Tg-Ab. The results indicate that the dietary group with frequent consumption of animal fats and butter is associated with positive plasma TPO-Ab and/or Tg-Ab (p = 0.01). The dietary group with frequent consumption of vegetables as well as the dietary group with high consumption of dried fruit, nuts, and muesli are associated with negative findings of TPO-Ab and/or Tg-Ab (p = 0.048 and p = 0.02, respectively). We showed that the anti-inflammatory dietary groups are associated with the negative findings of plasma TPO-Ab and/or Tg-Ab.

Differences in food consumption between patients with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and healthy individuals

“…It is important to have in mind that by animal fat we consider fat that is used in cooking/preparing meals excluding all other fat that can be consumed through red meat or other meat products. This result is in line with and could be considered as replication of the result of the recent populationbased study of 1887 participants from south Croatia that found association of animal fat consumption with increased TPOAb and/or TgAb positivity 17 , key characteristics of HT 2 . Triglycerides in animal fats, mainly contain saturated (SFA) and monounsaturated fat acids (MUFA) [24][25][26] .…”

“…This is an important observation because it does not support the proposition that a gluten free diet is beneficial to HT patients, as is usually recommended 44,45 . In line with these results, a recent study showed that muesli consumption, which consists mainly of whole grains 46 was associated with a decreased risk of positivity to TPOAb or TgAb antibodies 17 .…”

Relationship between thyroid function and elevated blood pressure in euthyroid adults

“…However, the present large‐scale cross‐sectional study supports the important hypothesis that THs levels even within the euthyroid range, may contribute to the development of elevated BP in the general population. Secondly, although our analyses made adjustment for a considerable number of confounders, there is the potential for confounding, such as many lifestyle factors (including dietary factors, physical activity) and cardiorespiratory fitness, which may affect the relationship between THs and elevated BP. Thus, a well‐designed randomized controlled trial is required to verify these results.…”

The effect of multiple nutrients on plasma parathyroid hormone level in healthy individuals

“…Pearson's correlation coefficient was calculated for numerical variables, while t-test and ANOVA were used to asses association between groups in PTH level. We applied Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to data from the FFQ to reduce the list of 58 food items to key dietary groups (factors) (for details see (Matana et al 2017)). Food items with absolute factor loadings >0.30 were considered as contributing to a factor.…”