Читать книгу The Healthy Thyroid: What you can do to prevent and alleviate thyroid imbalance - Patsy Westcott - Страница 67

Because the immune system is commonly triggered by infection, the hunt has been on for some time to identify a possible specific infection that might trigger autoimmune thyroid problems. One of the most intriguing suggestions, described by US surgeon Mr David V. Feliciano in the American Journal of Surgery in November 1992, was that Graves’ disease might be sparked off by a food-poisoning bug known as Yersinia enterocolitica, a distant relative of the plague bacteria.

Although Y. enterocolitica has not proved to be as significant as Feliciano suspected, a study published in the journal Clinical Microbiology and Infection in 2001 reported that patients with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis also had a 14-fold increase in Y. enterocolitica antibodies – so the question is still open.