Medical Treatment of Graves' Disease

Hyun-Kyung Chung

doi:10.11106/ijt.2019.12.2.79

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Chung: Medical Treatment of Graves' Disease

Review Article

International Journal of Thyroidology 2019; 12(2): 79-84.

Published online: 30 November 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.11106/ijt.2019.12.2.79

Medical Treatment of Graves' Disease

Hyun-Kyung Chung

Division of Endocrinology, Department of Internal Medicine, Dankook University Hospital, Cheonan, Korea.

Correspondence: Hyun-Kyung Chung, MD, PhD, Division of Endocrinology, Department of Internal Medicine, Dankook University Hospital, 201 Manghyang-ro, Dongnam-gu, Cheonan 31116, Korea. Tel: 82-41-550-3057, Fax: 82-41-556-3256, chkendo@dankook.ac.kr

Received 8 October 2019 Revised 5 November 2019 Accepted 9 November 2019

The Korean Thyroid Association

(open-access):

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Among the three treatment modalities of Graves' disease which include antithyroid drug (ATD), radioactive iodine and surgery, the ATD is most commonly preferred in Korea due to ease of use and definite curative effects on the thyrotoxic symptoms. However, several uncertainties about ATD remain: for example, the mechanism of actions on immune modulation, differences in the effects of drugs among individuals and associated factors in the view of remission. In recent years, long-term ATD treatment has been confirmed as an effective and safe therapy modality in adults, and several treatment guidelines have been released which accept long-term ATD therapy as an acceptable alternative to ablative therapy in Graves' patients. In this review, we summarize the recent progress in understanding the clinical role of ATD and emerging new antithyroid drugs focusing on immunomodulation.

Keywords: Graves' disease, Antithyroid drug, Remission

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