The Thyroid in Health & Disease
To improve the clinical management and quality of life of people with suboptimal thyroid function.
Cardiff has long been associated with clinical and basic research into thyroid-related problems. This will be highlighted by the publication in early 2012, of the results of the Controlled Antenatal Thyroid Screening (CATS) Study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the brain-child of Professor John Lazarus.
This first CATS study is being followed by CATS II, which is just one of the cohorts (local, national and international) used in our investigations of thyroid genetic epidemiology (Colin Dayan, Marian Ludgate, Peter Taylor, Anna de Lloyd). For example, in CATS II, we assess indicators of cardiometabolic risk (Aled Rees, Dionne Shillabeer) and measures of body composition (John Gregory, Wil Evans) for subsequent analysis of phenotype/genotype correlations.
Many thyroid and related problems have an immune basis and our clinicians (Colin Dayan, Buchi Okosieme, Shazli Draman, Carol Lane, Daniel Morris) and basic scientists (Marian Ludgate, Lei Zhang, Fiona Grennan-Jones) work together to increase understanding of the mechanisms in operation. Thyroid Eye Disease is a particular focus, with well established in vitro models (also applied in studies delineating regulation of body composition) complemented by clinical studies, many of these performed in conjunction with a dedicated European network EUGOGO.
Our research has a strong translational component as illustrated by the Supraregional Assay Service for the molecular characterization of hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism which we and our colleagues in medical biochemistry (Carol Evans, Sharon Whatley) provide.