Thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy in juvenile Graves' disease--clinical, endocrine and therapeutic aspects.

Children have about the same risk (or slightly increased) as adults to develop Graves' ophthalmopathy (GO) once they have contracted Graves' hyperthyroidism. The severity of childhood GO appears to be less than that of adult GO. The female preponderance is similar between children and adults with Graves' hyperthyroidism (87% and 83%, respectively), but the prevalence of smoking is much lower in children than in adults (4% and 47%, respecttively). Smoking is a risk factor for GO, and the odds increase significantly with increasing severity of GO. It has also been shown that the manifestation of GO begins to resemble the adult findings more closely when adolescence approaches. This could be explained by increasing smoking prevalence with age. A recent study supports the above data and provides a very interesting clue: the difference might be caused by exposure to tobacco smoke. Regarding treatment of thyroid eye disease (TED) in childhood, most physicians who are dealing with such cases prefer a 'wait-and-see' policy. Pharmacological intervention, predominantly with steroids, is considered appropriate in case of worsening of eye changes or no improvement of eye changes when the patient has become euthyroid. Doses between 5 and 20 g prednisone daily are used depending on the severity of the case. It has to be kept in mind that prolonged prednisone administration, which should be used in some severe cases of TED, is associated with weight gain, immune suppression and growth failure in children. Recently, it has been shown that somatostatin analogs (SM-as) might be of therapeutic value in the treatment of active TED in adults. However, initial studies were uncontrolled, non-randomized, and included only small numbers of patients. In the past 2 years, three double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical studies have been published, which have demonstrated only a modest improvement in proptosis. The current range of SM-a drugs target two of five somatostatin receptors present in the orbital tissues of TED patients. Therefore, there is a reason to believe that newer generations of SM-as that target a wider range of somatostatin receptors may show markedly superior results in the treatment of TED. Retrobulbar irradiation, which has proved beneficial in adults with TED, has no place in the treatment of juvenile GO, in view of the theoretical risk of tumor induction. The same applies to orbital decompression.