Assisting the diagnosis of overt hypothyroidism with pattern recognition methods, making use of a set of routine tests, and their multiple correlation with total T4

In our previous papers we proposed a novel screening method that assists the diagnosis of patients with overt Graves’ hyperthyroidism by making use of routine test data and pattern recognition methods. This method can be applied by non-specialists during physical check-ups at low cost and is expected to lead to rapid referrals for examination and treatment by thyroid specialists, that is, to improve patients’ QOL. In this report, we investigate whether a similar screening method is also applicable for overt hypothyroidism. Fifty-six subjects with 12 routine test data with a known diagnosis (30 patients with overt hypothyroidism and 52 healthy female volunteers, and 26 patients with overt hypothyroidism and 48 healthy male volunteers) were used as training data. Then, test samples of patients who had also undergone the same routine tests at the Tohoku university hospital were screened by our method for overt hypothyroidism. The present examination of the screening method showed its high screening ability with the set of four parameters used (lactate dehydrogenase [LDH], total cholesterol [TC], red blood cell [RBC] and serum creatinine [S-Cr]). It was found that there was a strong multiple correlation between the set of routine test parameters and serum total thyroxine (TT4) in the patients with overt hypothyroidism, which supports the usefulness of our screening method.