A Case-control Study of the Association between Ulcerative Colitis and Hyperthyroidism in an Asian Population

Summary

Objective

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic relapsing inflammatory disease with significant clinical diversity. However, the etiology, pathogenesis, and optimal treatment of UC remain unclear. The purpose of this case-control study was to investigate the association between previously diagnosed hyperthyroidism and UC using a large population-based dataset in Taiwan.

Methods

The data for this population-based case-control study were retrieved from the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2005. We included 2709 patients with UC as cases and 8127 sex- and age-matched patients without UC as controls. A conditional logistic regression analysis was conducted to compute the odds ratio (OR) and corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI) for the association between UC and prior hyperthyroidism.

Results

We found that, in total, 327 of the 10,836 sampled patients (3.02%) had previously been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. There was a higher proportion of prior hyperthyroidism among cases than controls (4.10% vs. 2.66%, p<0.001). A conditional logistic regression showed that the OR of prior hyperthyroidism was 1.57 (95% CI=1.24~1.98) compared to controls. Similarly, after adjusting for monthly income, geographic location, and urbanization level, cases were still more likely to have previously been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism than controls (OR=1.61, 95% CI=1.27~2.05). Furthermore, we analyzed the ORs of prior hyperthyroidism between cases and controls according to age group. We found that of the youngest group of sampled patients (18~39 years), cases had the greatest adjusted OR for having previously been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism than controls (OR=1.98, 95% CI=1.04~3.79).

Conclusions

This study demonstrated an association between UC and hyperthyroidism.

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