Advances in the differential diagnosis of transient hyperthyroidism in pregnancy and Graves' disease

Background The occurrence of thyrotoxicosis during pregnancy is mainly attributed to gestational transient thyrotoxicosis (GTT) and Graves' disease (GD). It is important to distinguish between GTT and Graves' disease because the two diseases are treated very differently. However, a gold standard for the differential diagnosis of the two diseases is currently lacking, and the most common method of differentiation is based on past medical history and clinical presentation combined with thyroid-related antibodies. Methods A literature search of the electronic databases PubMed, Embase, Medline, Google Scholar, Cochrane Library, China Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang Database, Chinese Scientific Journals Full Text Database and China Biomedical CD-ROM was performed. The search period ranged from journal inception until 2022. We used the following search terms in "All fields": {["thyroid" (common field) OR "thyroid" (subject line)] OR "hyperthyroidism" (common field)} AND {["pregnancy" (title) OR "pregnancy" (title)] AND "one over" (common field)} OR {["pregnancy" (common field) OR "pregnancy" (common field) OR "pregnancy" (subject line)] AND "Graves'" (common field)}. Results In recent years, some clinical studies at home and abroad have proposed other meaningful differential indicators, such as thyroid stimulating hormone, chorionic gonadotropin, thyroid hormone levels and thyroid ultrasound. Conclusion The differential diagnostic significance of each of these indicators is summarised here with the goal of providing a better reference for the differential diagnosis of hyperthyroidism during pregnancy in clinical practice.