Low FT4 - Question and Answer Forum - Elaine Moore Graves' Disease and Autoimmune Disease Education

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Wednesday, February 08, 2012

..:: Q & A ::..

THE Q & A

Welcome to The Q&A with Elaine Moore. Registered members are invited to ask any question of Elaine Moore on autoimmune diseases, Graves' disease, other thyroid diseases and subconditions, laboratory work, traditional and complementary medicine, triggers and environmental influences, thyroid and immune disorders in pets and animals, and other relevant areas of inquiry.

Each thread represents one question with one answer and will only appear at the time it is answered. Once answered, further replies cannot be made to the same thread since each thread represents only one question. A new thread will need to be started for additional questions.

Questions are answered solely by Elaine Moore, a medical writer and clinical laboratory scientist, MT, CLS, with more than 30 years of experience in immunology. Moore has also authored and edited over a dozen books in the area of health sciences and is an editor for McFarland Publisher's Health Topics Series.

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The Q & A with Elaine Moore

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4/21/2009 2:02 PM

Howard

Joined: 3/5/2009

Posts: 4

Low FT4

Dear Elaine,

I've learned a lot from your website. Thanks for answering all those questions and helping people with Graves. I was diagnosed with graves about a year ago and also have a mild case of TED. I'm taking 2.5 mg of methimazole a day, My march 3 lab shows;

TSH 0.55, FT4 0.64 and FT3 3.0. I just cut my methi to 1.25 mg per day. My Endo doesn't agree. What do you recommend?

howsie

4/21/2009 10:32 PM

Elaine

Joined: 8/1/2008

Posts: 3174

Re: Low FT4

Hi Howsie,

You really don't want your FT4 falling any lower than 0.64, and the fact that you're secreting TSH normally but aren't in remission suggests that your ATD dose is too high.

Your options would be to reduce your dose to 1.25 mg or use Block and Replace therapy. Here, you'd stay on the 2.5 mg dose and add 25-50 mcg of thyroid replacement hormone. Lots of endos don't like to reduce the dose below 2.5 mg but this is a better option than allowing you to become hypothyroid. Best, Elaine

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