The Role of Childhood Traumas in Adult Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis

Abstract

Objective: Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (HT) is the most common
autoimmune thyroid disease. There are studies suggesting that
childhood traumas cause hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis
dysfunction in adulthood, which predisposes patients to autoimmune
diseases. Our study aimed to investigate the relationship between HT
and childhood trauma.
Methods: In our study, we included 52 patients diagnosed with HT
and 31 healthy controls and evaluated the Turkish Childhood Trauma
Questionnaire (which evaluates childhood traumas retrospectively)
in both groups. The diagnosis of HT was confirmed using anti-thyroid
peroxi-dase (anti-TPO) levels and thyroid ultrasonography.
Results: The childhood emotional neglect score (10.79±3.90) was
significantly higher in pa-tients with HT than in the control group
(p=0.04). However, no significant difference was ob-served between
the two groups regarding other components. In addition, a significant
positive correlation was found between anti-TPO levels and emotional
neglect score (p=0.02; r=0.26).
Conclusion: The significantly higher emotional neglect score in
patients with HT compared with the control group and the positive
correlation between childhood emotional neglect score and anti-TPO
level suggest that childhood traumas may play a role in the etiology of
adult HT. Further and large-scale studies are needed to elucidate all
aspects of this subject.