The prevalence of autoimmune hepatitis in Hashimoto's thyroiditis in a turkish population

Purpose : Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT) is an autoimmune thy- roid disorder. Although its etiopathogenesis is obscure, there are many findings about the relationship between other autoimmune diseases and HT. The reason for this association is a topic of inter- est, but in our study we searched for the concurrence of autoim- mune hepatitis (AH) with HT, which is a relatively new autoim- mune disorder for this association. Methods : Forty-six patients (44 female, 2 male) with HT were included in the study. Liver function tests, viral hepatitis markers, autoantibody panels, ultrasonography and liver biopsy were per- formed in certain cases. Results : All patients were hepatitis B negative, only two patients were hepatitis C positive (4.3%). Smooth muscle antibody (SMA) was 21.7% positive, ANA was 26% positive, Anti-Liver kidney microsomal antibody-1 (LKM-1) was 13.4% positive. Anti-mito- chondrial antibody (AMA) was not detected. Liver biopsy per- formed on six patients. Two of them had (+++) positive LKM-1 antibody titer, the other two had ANA and SMA positive results respectively and the last two had chronic hepatitis C infection. The pathology revealed AH in first four patients. We found four out of forty-six patients with HT as AH (8.69%). Conclusion : HT patients should be searched for autoimmune diseases and AH might be one of them. (Acta gastroenterol. belg., 2002, 65, 143-145).