flare up with sjogrens../trying plaquenil

[y-gwair]

Are you back on the plaquenil?? thanks for responding!`

Me? yes, on 200 mg for about 3 months now, just starting to damp down fibro again.

[calli66]

Do you mean thyroid antibody levels were fluctuating, or thyroid hormone levels (fT3 fT4 TSH)? Are you taking any thyroid replacement hormones? I'm not sure plaquenil on it's own would help much with autoimmune thyroiditis (though it can help damp down hypergammaglobulinemia, which can underlie both Sjogren's and Hashimoto's thyroiditis).

I'm not sure whether it was antibodies or hormone levels. I started taking 50 mcg synthetic hormone at the same time as I started Plaquenil and my TSH level was stable all that time for 2.5 years. Then I quit the Plaquenil. For about 2 months my TSH was still stable, but a tad lower. I had tons of energy and felt really good (better than when I was on Plaquenil).

Maybe my thyroid gland started to produce more hormone, or maybe I was converting more hormone because my intestinal tract was doing better (no Plaquenil). Anyway, I think my antibodies started attacking my thyroid gland as a response. I had pain "attacks" and swelling of the gland. By the time I got my antibodies checked I had gotten quite hypo and the thyroblobulin Ab levels were high. (Had no Free T3,4 tests---my doc doesn't "believe" they have much value, so doesn't order them unless I ask her to---just recently I realized that I should ask....).

Haven't had serum gamma globulin levels tested recently, but had slightly elevated levels 2-3 years ago.

I'm now on a higher med dose and my thyroid gland is suppressed, and the swelling/pain has gone down, and I'm feeling much better (TSH is slightly lower than the bottom of the ref range).

Maybe it was a coincidence that my thyroid gland "woke up" and misbehaved right after I quit Plaquenil, but I still think there's some connection.

Calli

[y-gwair]

I'm now on a higher med dose and my thyroid gland is suppressed, and the swelling/pain has gone down, and I'm feeling much better (TSH is slightly lower than the bottom of the ref range).

Maybe it was a coincidence that my thyroid gland "woke up" and misbehaved right after I quit Plaquenil, but I still think there's some connection.

Yes, I think that's quite possible there was a connection if you weren't on a dose high enough to suppress thyroid gland activity, which would still have been fluctuating under attack from antibodies. I've known other people feel very unwell/unstable on low doses of thyroxine (25-50mcg); about the one thing my doctors ever got right was raising it steadily to my comfortable maximum, though this was quite hard to determine. I found fT4 to be the most useful in fine-tuning my dose; I felt terrible when I was overdosing slightly on 125 mcg. TSH was within range, but fT4 was over.