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The impact of elevated thyroid stimulating hormone on female subfertility

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Reproductive Medicine and Biology

Abstract

Purpose

Hypothyroidism is known to have a negative impact on female reproduction even in subclinical form, subclinical hypothyroidism (SH). This study aimed to investigate the association between elevated TSH level and reproductive outcome.

Methods

We retrospectively evaluated a total of 203 infertile women who first visited our infertility treatment division from January 1, 2009 to August 31, 2012, including 13 patients with TSH above 4.5 mIU/l (elevated-TSH patients), 11 of whom were diagnosed as SH, and 190 patients with normal TSH (normo-TSH patients). We evaluated them according to reproductive outcome, including clinical pregnancy, miscarriage, and live birth until April 31, 2014. We also aimed to redefine the upper limit of normal serum TSH level.

Results

Multivariate analysis showed significant influence of elevated TSH on clinical pregnancy, although miscarriage and live birth were not affected. In addition, we revealed that the rate of decreased ovarian reserve and unexplained infertility was increased in patients with elevated TSH levels.

Conclusions

We found an association between elevated TSH and the decreased rate of clinical pregnancy. This might be related to an ovulatory disorder and pathophysiology of unexplained infertility. These results may reinforce the usefulness of TSH screening in infertility population.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, The Mochida Memorial Foundation for Medical and Pharmaceutical Research, and The Nakatomi Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo, 113-8655, Japan

    Takehiro Hiraoka, Osamu Wada-Hiraike, Yasushi Hirota, Tetsuya Hirata, Kaori Koga, Yutaka Osuga & Tomoyuki Fujii

Authors
  1. Takehiro Hiraoka
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  2. Osamu Wada-Hiraike
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  3. Yasushi Hirota
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  4. Tetsuya Hirata
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  5. Kaori Koga
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  6. Yutaka Osuga
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  7. Tomoyuki Fujii
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Osamu Wada-Hiraike.

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The authors have no possible conflicts of interest to disclose.

Animal studies

This article does not contain any studies with animal subjects.

Human rights statements and informed consent

All procedures were in accordance with the institutional review board on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1964 and its later amendments. Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

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Hiraoka, T., Wada-Hiraike, O., Hirota, Y. et al. The impact of elevated thyroid stimulating hormone on female subfertility. Reprod Med Biol 15, 121–126 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12522-015-0221-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12522-015-0221-9

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