Thyroid dysfunction in women of reproductive age: laboratory protocol for infertility evaluation

Abstract

Background: Infertility in developing counties worldwide is associated with many social, financial, and medical challenges. With a prevalence rate of between 10 - 14 % and biochemical etiology of about 80% of the cases among Nigerian women, laboratory diagnosis has gradually assumed an important role in improved diagnosis.
Objective: The aim was to evaluate the prevalence of thyroid dysfunction in infertility and need to evaluate.
Method: This was a descriptive cross-sectional case study of one hundred and twenty-five (125) women selected by stratified random sampling method into two groups of primary and secondary infertility. A total of 125 healthy fertile women served as the control group. Serum freeT3 (fT3), feeT4 (fT4), and TSH were analyzed using commercial ELISA kits. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20.0 and the p-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Result: Twenty participants (16%) were observed to have associated thyroid dysfunction with infertility. The commonest thyroid dysfunction was overt hypothyroidism (9.6%) and subclinical hypothyroidism (4.0%) respectively and this was found to be commoner in secondary infertility (21.8%).
Conclusion: Thyroid function evaluation (especially serum TSH) should be included as a routine assessment in infertility protocol, especially in secondary infertility cases.