Role of irisin in Chinese patients with hypothyroidism: an interventional study

Abstract

Objective Irisin is a myokine that greatly affects energy expenditure and systemic metabolism. While thyroid hormone is likely associated with irisin, a direct relationship remains to be fully elucidated. This study aimed to investigate plasma irisin levels in Chinese patients with hypothyroidism. Methods A total of 155 subjects were divided into the hypothyroidism group or the control group. Fifty-seven patients in the hypothyroidism group received levothyroxine treatment. Baseline irisin levels were measured in the two groups and post-treatment levels were measured in the hypothyroidism group. Results Irisin levels were significantly lower in the hypothyroidism group than in the control group. In the hypothyroidism group, irisin levels were positively associated with free triiodothyronine and free thyroxine levels, and negatively associated with thyrotropin levels. In the hypothyroidism group, irisin levels were significantly increased after levothyroxine treatment. Multiple linear regression models showed that total cholesterol and free thyroxine levels were the only significant predictors of serum irisin levels. Conclusions Irisin levels are decreased in patients with hypothyroidism. Our results suggest that decreased irisin levels are directly associated with reduced thyroid hormone levels. These values may be restored after levothyroxine treatment in Chinese patients with hypothyroidism.

Circulating Irisin Level and Thyroid Dysfunction: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…Subgroup analyses were performed in patients with thyroid dysfunction and participants in the control group, respectively. In the patient group, correlation analyses of thyroid hormones and irisin showed no significant differences [28,30,[36][37][38]. In patients with hypothyroidism [28,30,37,38] and in patients with Hashimoto's thyroiditis [28,30,37], the pooling correlation coefficients of irisin with thyroid hormones had no statistical significance either.…”

“…Five studies were based in Turkey [28][29][30][31][32], three studies were based in Poland [33][34][35], two studies were based in Greece [36,37], and one study was based in China [38]. Six studies explored circulating irisin levels in patients with hypothyroidism [28,30,32,35,37,38]; two of them included patients with subclinical hypothyroidism [32,37]. Three studies explored circulating irisin levels in patients with hyperthyroidism [29,31,36].…”

“…Some studies even used strict matching mechanisms involving blood pressure, eating habits, and waist-hip ratio [28,36,37]. Five studies treated patients with hypothyroidism with levothyroxine; irisin levels after treatment were reported [30,32,34,37,38]. The correlation coefficients of irisin with thyroid hormones and antibodies were reported in 9 studies [28-31, 33, 34, 36-38].…”

“…Levothyroxine Treatment. Five studies reported irisin levels after levothyroxine treatment [30,32,34,37,38]. The treatment period ranged from 3 to 12 months, and most patients recovered to a euthyroid status.…”

Levothyroxine and insulin requirement in autoimmune polyglandular type 3 syndrome: a real-life study

“…It could be hypothesized that thyroid metabolism may influence circulating irisin levels, probably through muscle damage, which compromises the ability of muscle fibrocells to secrete this myokine [ 45 ]. Another hypothesis could be that the reduction of irisin levels in hypothyroid patients could be due to the loss of the stimulating action of fT3 and fT4 on PGC-1α [ 46 ].…”