Low Thyroid Diagnosis - Any Experience?

[Guest Trent10]

Some background - My boy Trent is seven years old (as of tomorrow) and has been very healthy for the three years that I've had him since his retirement. Never thought much about his lab results because he's a blood donor and they test his blood every time he comes in and they do a full panel annually and never mentioned that they've seen anything off.

 

This past week, he started to have diarrhea. He usually clears up within 24 hours, but this carried on for almost a week on an on-and-off basis despite a bland diet so I took him in to the vet. When the vet came in she asked "Has the donor clinic done a full panel on him recently? Because his thyroid results from last September were borderline." (I went and looked at them and sure enough they were - his T4 level was 0.6, and I believe the low end of "normal" for a greyhound is 0.5-0.6). She examined him and thought that overall he looked pretty good (and even said his colon wasn't nearly as irritated/inflamed as she thought it might be), prescribed the usual meds for diarrhea, and left it up to me to test further. Now, I was in full paranoid mode because my last grey had a period where he had diarrhea that wouldn't go away even with the usual treatment/meds, then he suddenly got worse, then they discovered he practically had no platelets and then he quickly went into liver failure and I had to put him down. I didn't want to risk missing anything with this boy, so I went ahead and ordered up the whole kit and caboodle (tests for blood, pee and poo) to get to the bottom of why he had the runs and told them to throw in a thyroid test just to see (not that the vet specifically thought the diarrhea was connected to that).

 

So we got the lab results today and everything is perfectly normal (for a greyhound, anyway), except his thyroid. His Free T4 was <0.3. The vet wants to start him on meds to see if we can improve that number.

 

I trust this vet - she seems pretty greyhound-savvy. But I have heard that greys can be over-diagnosed as hypothyroid and my concern is that Trent doesn't really have a lot of the classic hypothyroid symptoms. He hasn't gained weight. He's not shy or anxious - quite the opposite, in fact. He always approaches people on our walks looking for pets and this past Fourth of July didn't phase him at all. The only symptoms he might have is slow hair growth (the vet tech who runs the blood donor program remarked last time that the hair on the spot they shave to take the donation had barely grown back at all since his previous donation, and even asked if I had ever had his thyroid checked), and I noticed that in the last few months he's been increasingly sluggish on our walks - after about five minutes it's more of a "drag" than a walk. He's always walking behind me, often at the very end of the leash, and I'm hardly speed-walking. I had chalked it up to the heat, but in all honesty he also drags when we walk at night when it cools down to the 60s and he doesn't have the sun beating down on him.

 

So finally getting to the point and my question - has anyone else had experience with a grey who was truly hypothyroid but didn't show all the classic symptoms? I just don't want to start pumping him full of thyroid supplement when he might not actually need it.

[macoduck]

Was only a T4 run? A full thyroid panel needs to be run. Normal greyhound range is .5-3.6 per Dr Stack. www.greythealth.com Dr Couto's values are slightly different.

 

Generally you don't treat based on lab values. You treat if there's symptoms.

 

Others will soon chime in here with more info. Welcome to GreyTalk. We'd love to see a picture of your boy.

[tbhounds]

It's extremely common to have low T4 and Ft4 values in ghs. You must run a cTSH.

[GeorgeofNE]

Please don't react out of fear of something that happened to a different dog.

 

If your dog is asymptomatic, which it sounds like, your vet is not greyhound savvy if she is recommending thyroid meds based on a very borderline result.

[PrairieProf]

Please don't react out of fear of something that happened to a different dog.

 

If your dog is asymptomatic, which it sounds like, your vet is not greyhound savvy if she is recommending thyroid meds based on a very borderline result.

 

This is absolutely right. Tons of greyhounds have T4 way below 0.5 and full panels show they are perfectly normal. Absolutely no conclusions and no medication without a full thyroid panel (including breeds-specific interpretation at the lab -- Michigan State is considered the best).

[PatricksMom]

Welcome to GT, not to be an echo chamber, but run a full panel, have it sent to an outside lab, and treat if you see symptoms (and not a bald butt, lots of greyhounds are slow to regrow hair, particularly in that area, and have normal thyroid values). And hugs on the worrying, I know when you lose a dog, it makes you (or at least me) paranoid about stuff for a while.

[Guest Trent10]

Thanks for the advice. I'll talk to the vet again about his results.

 

And yeah, it is very hard to not worry when my last grey started out with rather mundane symptoms (diarrhea that wouldn't go away) and was gone a couple weeks later.

 

This is Trent in his embarrassing Christmas photo. He's so patient putting up with my nonsense!

 

http://imgbox.com/uoAPOpdv

[Batmom]

What a handsome pup!

[greytpups]

We just went through this with our female, Katie. She had some blood tests done because she's almost 11 and we wanted to get a baseline for her for future reference.

 

Her thyroid levels were very low, even for a greyhound and this he vet recommended Meds. I wanted to do more tests since the only test was the T4. However, I ignored my gut feeling and got a second opinion and this vet also suggested meds. Katie did seem like she was slowing down a bit so I agreed when they told me the meds will make her feel like a puppy again.

 

After a couple of weeks she didn't seem any more energetic, so I called the vet and said I want more tests. There still weren't ant changes in her energy levels when we took her off the meds.

 

I got a call from the vets office indicating she didn't have low thyroid levels after all since her TSH levels were not high either. Bottom line is that I wish I did further testing right away and saved some money and a couple of vet visits so it could have been easier on Katie.

Edited July 25, 2017 by greytpups

[Guest Trent10]

We just went through this with our female, Katie. She had some blood tests done because she's almost 11 and we wanted to get a baseline for her for future reference.

 

Her thyroid levels were very low, even for a greyhound and this he vet recommended Meds. I wanted to do more tests since the only test was the T4. However, I ignored my gut feeling and got a second opinion and this vet also suggested meds. Katie did seem like she was slowing down a bit so I agreed when they told me the meds will make her feel like a puppy again.

 

After a couple of weeks she didn't seem any more energetic, so I called the vet and said I want more tests. There still weren't ant changes in her energy levels when we took her off the meds.

 

I got a call from the vets office indicating she didn't have low thyroid levels after all since her TSH levels were not high either. Bottom line is that I wish I did further testing right away and saved some money and a couple of vet visits so it could have been easier on Katie.

 

Thanks - this is exactly what I was thinking of doing, and it seems his situation is similar. We mostly tested his thyroid because the vet thought a previous test looked borderline to her and she wondered if it was an issue for him. And like your Katie, his only real issues appear to be low energy on walks and for him, slow hair regrowth. I didn't give him his meds this morning and plan to talk to the vet again.

Edited July 25, 2017 by Trent10

[GeorgeofNE]

I DID put my borderline dog on meds, but he was not asymptomatic.

 

He took them for about a year, and I noticed no real change, so he is currently off them, and again, no real change. As my vet and I agreed, what is the point in pumping hormones into him if they don't even do anything?

 

My dog comes from a sire who is known to produce low thyroid pups. I tried the meds because I have a friend who has a half sister, and she benefitted greatly from them. But mine did not.