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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Pediatric Endocrinology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fendo.2024.1426672

Increased incidence of Graves' disease during the COVID-19 pandemic in children and adolescents in the United States

Provisionally accepted
Naama Pollack-Schreiber Naama Pollack-Schreiber 1*Joanna S. Fishbein Joanna S. Fishbein 2Benjamin Udoka Nwosu Benjamin Udoka Nwosu 1Parissa Salemi Parissa Salemi 1
  • 1 Division of Pediatric Endocrinology, Cohen Children’s Medical Center, New Hyde Park, New York, United States
  • 2 Biostatistics Unit, Institute of Molecular Medicine, Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, New York, New York, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Reports in adults indicate that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and vaccination trigger the expression of autoimmune disease such as Graves' disease, but the incidence of new onset Graves' disease and its temporal relationship to the peaks of COVID-19 cases in children are unclear.Methods: This is a retrospective study of children and adolescents with new-onset Graves' disease diagnosed between September 2017 to August 2022, N=156, mean age of 12.5±4 year (y), with a range of 2.9-17.9y. There were 119 female (76.3%) and 37 male (23.7%) subjects.Subjects were categorized into 2 groups: pre-COVID-19 era Graves' disease (n=63, age 12.5±3.3y), and COVID-19 era Graves' disease (n=93, age 12.4±4.4y). We calculated incidence rate based on new cases of Graves' disease and total number of new patient referrals to our endocrine clinic. We first compared the demographic, clinical and biochemical data between the above 2 groups; and also, between subjects with either a history of or vaccination (n=17) to a control group (n=63).The incidence of Graves' disease was significantly higher during the pandemic: pre-COVID-19 versus the COVID-19 era, n=55, 0.56% vs n=93, 0.9%, p=0.005, after accounting for the total number of annual new patient referrals during the study period. The rise in the cases of Graves' disease followed the spikes in the number of cases of COVID-19 in NY. There was also a statistically significant difference in the race distribution between the pre-COVID-19 and the COVID-19 era (p=0.026).: The incidence of Graves' disease increased significantly in children living in New York during the COVID-19 pandemic. The temporal relationship between the peaks of COVID-19 cases and the increased cases of new onset Graves' disease suggest possible autoimmune triggering by SARS-CoV-2.

    Keywords: Graves' disease, Hyperthyroidism, Auto-immune thyroid disease, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2

    Received: 01 May 2024; Accepted: 14 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Pollack-Schreiber, Fishbein, Nwosu and Salemi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Naama Pollack-Schreiber, Division of Pediatric Endocrinology, Cohen Children’s Medical Center, New Hyde Park, New York, United States

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