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More than one way to skin a thyroid. Managing pediatric hypothyroidism with weekly intramuscular levothyroxine

  • Patria Alba , Naim Mitre and Max Feldt ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: March 9, 2016

Abstract

Background: Oral levothyroxine (L-T4) supplementation is usually an effective therapy in pediatric hypothyroidism, except in patients with malabsorption or pseudomalabsorption. In these cases, parenteral L-T4 may be required, but there is a paucity of information about this delivery method in the pediatric population.

Case presentation: We present three cases of pediatric patients with primary hypothryoidism unresponsive to oral L-T4 that were successfully treated with intramuscular (IM) L-T4.

Conclusions: This is the first pediatric case series of successful IM L-T4 therapy in refractory primary hypothyroidism. Our case series demonstrates that once weekly IM L-T4 dosing may be a safe and well tolerated treatment regimen for pediatric patients.


Corresponding author: Max Feldt, DO, Department of Pediatric Endocrinology, Children’s Mercy Hospital, 3101 Broadway Blvd., Kansas City, MO, USA, Phone: +816-960-8800, E-mail:

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Received: 2015-9-28
Accepted: 2016-1-18
Published Online: 2016-3-9
Published in Print: 2016-6-1

©2016 by De Gruyter

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