Table 2.

Patient characteristics at diagnosis and at euthyroidism for group A (decrease in plasma FT3I after initiation of levothyroxine) and group B (increase or no change in plasma FT3I after initiation of levothyroxine)

	Group A n = 24	Group B n = 43	p-value
Age at diagnosis (years)	44.6 ± 15.1	52.2 ± 13.8	0.047*
Weight at HQRL assessment (kg)	78.9 ± 13.7	76.8 ± 14.3	0.570
Gender (n)
Male	7	6
Female	17	37	0.131
Intake of LT4 (n)
Morning	3	8
Bedtime	21	35	0.734
Brand of LT4 (n)
Eltroxin®	23	32
Euthyrox®	2	10	0.186
Dose of LT4 at euthyroidism	96.5 ± 30.7	103.4 ± 30.1	0.44
Smoker at diagnosis (n)
Never	9	13
Smoker	4	5
Ex-smoker	11	25	0.753
Severity of hypothyroidism at diagnosis (n)
Subclinical	18	18
Overt	6	25	0.011*
Time to euthyroidism (days)	125 ± 102	110 ± 58	0.492
LogTSH at diagnosis	0.94 ± 0.26	1.09 ± 0.39	0.071
Anti-log TSH, mU/L	8.7	12.3
Total T3 at diagnosis, nmol/L	1.69 ± 0.33	1.55 ± 0.31	0.091
Total T4 at diagnosis, nmol/L	70.25 ± 18.1	66.22 ± 19.3	0.38
T4 uptake at diagnosis	1.03 ± 0.15	1.12 ± 0.13	0.017*
FT4I at diagnosis, nmol/L	68.2 ± 12.2	59.5 ± 14.4	0.011*
FT3I at diagnosis nmol/L	1.66 ± 0.22	1.40 ± 0.25	< 0.001*
FT4I/ logTSH at diagnosis	78.7 ± 27.7	63.01 ± 27.7	0.031*
FT4I/FT3i ratio at diagnosis	41.8 ± 8.6	42.7 ± 8.6	0.693
LogTSH at euthyroidism	0.27 ± 0.30	0.33 ± 0.23	0.47
Anti-log TSH, mU/L	1.9	2.1
Total T3 at euthyroidism, nmol/L	1.51 ± 0.29	1.58 ± 0.23	0.323
Total T4 at euthyroidism, nmol/L	98.9 ± 19.0	94.72 ± 17.2	0.371
T4 uptake at euthyroidism	1.05 ± 0.16	1.02 ± 0.09	0.496
FT4I at euthyroidism, nmol/L	95.2 ± 16.9	92.4 ± 14.0	0.51
FT3I at euthyroidism nmol/L	1.55 ± 0.21	1.45 ± 0.24	0.098
FT4I/FT3i ratio at euthyroidism	66.5 ± 11.9	60.4 ± 10.3	0.043*
LogAnti-TPO at diagnosis	2.79 ± 0.57	2.84 ± 0.51	0.927
Anti-log anti-TPO at diagnosis, kIU/L	616	692
Time from diagnosis to HRQL assessment (days)	66 ± 48	74 ± 52	0.499

^*P-value < 0.05. Statistically significant difference is highlighted in bold. For abbreviations, see Table 1