Tests you may need to diagnose thryoid disease and related problems and web links to help you find out more about them and where to get them from.

It is recommended that TSH, FT4, FT3, TPO and Tga tests be run for thryoid disease to give a full picture as to whether you have the illness and whether it is caused by thyroid anitbodies. Please note that many labs will only test TSH and T4 in the first instance and not the rest which would give a better picture. Many Labs will not run a T3 test even if specifically requested.

There is some controversy at the moment over the wide range of the TSH tests in the UK and a call to reduce it. In the USA in March 2003 this range was reduced to 0.3-3.0 instead of the standard UK range of 0.5-5.0 meaning many members of this site not diagnosed would have been if living there or would have been diagnosed earlier. Therefore if you return a result between those figures it may be worth talking to your gp or endo and going back for repeat testing rather than dismissing it totally or having antibody tests done privately as this can give a better picture. When first tested my result was 3.99 so I wasn't diagnosed, however within a year I had gone out of range and I had extremely high thyroid antibodies leading to a diagnosis of Hashimoto's disease

Thyroid UK are currently raising funds for a study to see if the new saliva and urine tests make  better  results than the blood tests. These are used by private doctors currenlty but not by the NHS

Other tests you may need to give a fuller picture are B12, Folic Acid, Ferritin, Hormones and Cholesterol Tests. Low levels of female hormones can mimic hypothyroidism as can low levels of the B vitamins and iron (see other sections for more details of the effects of these). High Cholesterol can be an indicator of hypothyroidism do to the slowing down of the metabolism and used to be one of teh test used, along with low body temperature, before the new testing regime came into place.