Carbohydrate tolerance in autoimmune thyroiditis.

Glucose tolerance tests were carried out on fifty patients with autoimmune thyroiditis of varying duration and severity. Two were floridly diabetic, and a further six showed diabetic abnormalities of glucose tolerance, giving an over-all incidence of 16 per cent. Diabetics were significantly older than nondiabetics, but the two groups did not differ in terms of duration of thyroid disease or frequency of associated disease of probable autoimmune origin. The prevalence of diabetes in patients with autoimmune thyroiditis appears to be the same as that in the population generally.