SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Thyroid Eye Disease is a lesser-known condition that affects five times more American women than men.
Another thing people may not know is it has a treatment. The FDA approved an infusion called Tepezza in 2020. Its the first drug created to take on this disease.
It creates antibodies that can get stuck behind the eye. The antibodies thicken the muscle and make your eyes bulge. Fifty percent of people who have Graves Disease experience this as well. Before Tepezza, doctors could treat the thyroid problem, but patients would still get stuck with the eye disease.
"It essentially works to prevent those antibodies from stimulating that kind of inflammatory reaction behind the eye, and that can really help to regress some of those changes," said ABC10 Health Expert Dr. Kohli. "Now women tend to have thyroid eye disease more than men, and sometimes it doesn't even have to correlate with how bad your systemic thyroid disease is. Interestingly enough, when men get thyroid eye disease, it does end up being more severe than it is in women. So, I think it is an important landmark for both genders that we have now this treatment to treat this condition because it is something that can affect not just your perception of yourself, your interaction with others, but also your ability to function in day-to-day life."
Read more about thyroid disease from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention here.
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