Overview on Thyroid Disorders and Stress

Background: Several studies have found a link between stress and thyroid disorder, the majority of evidence supporting stress contributing to the start and progression of autoimmune illness is circumstantial, and the mechanisms by which stress impacts thyroid is not fully understood. Study aims to summarize the current evidence regarding relation between thyroid disorders and stress.

Methodology: MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, Psyc Info, and ASSIA were searched and reference lists of included studies were searched. Studies were included that described relation between stress and thyroid disorders. No software has been utilized to analyze the data. The data was extracted based on specific form that contains (Author’s name, publication year, country, methodology and results).

Results: The search of the mentioned databases returned a total of 87 studies that were included for title screening. 54 of them were included for abstract screening, which lead to the exclusion of 32 articles. The remaining 22 publications full-texts were reviewed. The full-text revision lead to the exclusion of 13 studies, and 9 were enrolled for final data extraction.

Conclusion: There is evidence regarding the association of thyroid disorders with stress. These findings add to the growing literature suggesting that thyroid function changes may be associated with stress.