{"doi":"10.1210/jendso/bvab181","title":"Delayed Follow-up Visits and Thyrotropin Among Patients With Levothyroxine During the COVID-19 Pandemic","abstract":"CONTEXT: The indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on clinical practice have received great attention, but evidence regarding thyroid disease management is lacking. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to investigate the association between delayed follow-up visits during the pandemic and their serum thyrotropin (TSH) levels among patients being treated with levothyroxine. METHODS: This study included 25 361 patients who made a follow-up visit as scheduled (n = 9063) or a delayed follow-up visit (< 30 d, n = 10 909; ≥ 30 d, n = 5389) during the pandemic (after April 2020) in Japan. We employed modified Poisson models to estimate the adjusted risk ratio (aRR) of TSH greater than 4.5 mIU/L and greater than 10 mIU/L during the pandemic according to the 3 types of follow-up visit group (ie, as scheduled, delayed < 30 d, and delayed ≥ 30 d). The models included age, sex, city of residence, TSH levels, underlying thyroid disease, dose of levothyroxine, and duration of levothyroxine prescriptions. RESULTS: The mean age was 52.8 years and women were 88%. Patients who were older and had a higher dose or longer duration of levothyroxine prescriptions were more likely to make a delayed follow-up visit during the pandemic. Changes in TSH were larger among the delayed-visit groups than the scheduled-visit group. We found increased risks of elevated TSH levels during the pandemic among the delayed visit groups, particularly those with delayed visit of 30 or more days (TSH > 4.5 mIU/L, aRR [95% CI] = 1.72 [1.60-1.85]; and TSH > 10 mIU/L, aRR [95% CI] = 2.38 [2.16-2.62]). CONCLUSION: A delayed follow-up visit during the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with less well-controlled TSH among patients with levothyroxine.","journal":"Journal of the Endocrine Society","year":2021,"id":207078,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9363,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":792150,"name":"Jaeduk Yoshimura Noh","orcid":"0000-0001-7340-8603","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":792151,"name":"Ai Yoshihara","orcid":"0000-0003-1323-4722","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":792152,"name":"Natsuko Watanabe","orcid":"0000-0003-2297-5004","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":792628,"name":"Masako Matsumoto","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":792153,"name":"Miho Fukushita","orcid":"0000-0001-6815-5891","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":792154,"name":"Nami Suzuki","orcid":"0000-0003-2877-6647","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":792629,"name":"Ayako Hoshiyama","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":792630,"name":"Takako Mitsumatsu","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":792155,"name":"Ai Suzuki","orcid":"0000-0003-4887-7314","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":792631,"name":"Aya Kinoshita","orcid":null,"position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":792156,"name":"Kentaro Mikura","orcid":"0000-0003-2909-0911","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":792632,"name":"Ran Yoshimura","orcid":null,"position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":792157,"name":"Kiminori Sugino","orcid":"0000-0002-9692-9871","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":792158,"name":"Koichi Ito","orcid":"0000-0003-0257-0069","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":308995,"name":"Kosuke Inoue","orcid":"0000-0001-9614-8103","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":23,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:51:45.688025Z","pmid":"34934884","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}