Am J Psychiatry 1990; 147:929-933
Copyright © 1990 by American Psychiatric Association
The hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis in social phobia
ME Tancer, MB Stein, CS Gelernter and TW Uhde
Section on Anxiety and Affective Disorders, NIMH, Bethesda, MD 20892.
The authors investigated indices of hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid (HPT)
axis function in patients with social phobia. They found no differences
between patients with social phobia and age- and sex- matched control
subjects in plasma T3, T4, free T4, or TSH levels or in the proportion of
subjects with positive antithyroid antibodies. Patients with social phobia
and control subjects also did not differ in three of the four measures used
to assess TSH response to TRH. These data suggest that abnormalities in
thyroid function are not requisite neuroendocrine correlates of social
phobia.
