Info About Health And Risk Assessment

Women with Hashimoto's autoimmune thyroiditis often find that their condition improves during pregnancy, due to the change in the status of their normally-overactive immune condition. But any hypothyroid symptoms are a threat to the baby’s wellbeing, and thyroid function testing is essential at every trimester.

How Pregnancy Affects the Thyroid

Even normal, fully-functioning thyroids are affected by pregnancy. This is because two hormones that are closely associated with pregnancy also affect the thyroid: human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and estrogen.

• HCG is the hormone that is measured in the pregnancy test. It has a low-level thyroid-stimulating activity, and so as levels rise during the first trimester, the body slightly lowers its level of TSH (it “thinks” it doesn’t need as much of the Thyroid Stimulating Hormone, as it seems to already be stimulated). This situation leads to a condition of lower TSH but raised Free T4 levels (1) during the first trimester, but all hormone levels return to normal for the second and third trimesters.
• The second important hormone is estrogen, the main female hormone. This increases the total thyroid hormone levels in the blood (because it increases the amount of thyroid hormone-binding proteins in the serum, and >99% of the thyroid hormones in the blood are bound to these proteins). But the levels of ‘free’ or active hormones (Free T4 and Free T3) usually remain normal, as the free hormones are not bound to proteins.

In other words, in a normal pregnancy, the thyroid is considered to be functioning properly if the TSH, Free T4 and Free T3 remain at normal, healthy levels.

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