Abstract

MANRIQUE-HURTADO, Helard  and  PINTO-VALDIVIA, Miguel. Methimazole-induced agranulocytosis in patients with Graves’ disease . Rev Med Hered [online]. 2013, vol.24, n.2, pp.109-113. ISSN 1018-130X.

Objective: To describe the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of patients with methimazole-induced agranulocytosis. Methods: A retrospective, case series study. We reviewed the medical records of all patients diagnosed with methimazole-induced agranulocytosis treated at Hospital Nacional Arzobispo Loayza between January 2002 and December 2008. We sought association between demographic and clinical variables with mortality and recovery time. Results: Thirty (0.60%) patients with Graves’ disease were hospitalized with a diagnosis of methimazole-induced agranulocytosis. The median age was 33,5 years and 86,67% were women. On admission, all patients had fever and sore throat. The treatment included isolation, suspension of methimazole, antibiotics and glucocorticoids. Twelve (40%) patients received GM-CSF. The granulocyte count was normalized after 10,59 days and four (13.33%) patients died from bacterial infections and sepsis. In all cases, the final treatment was radioiodine. There was no significant difference in age, sex, methimazole dose, duration of treatment, and use of stimulating factor, among the patients who died and survivors. Furthermore, the use of stimulating factor did not reduce the recovery time from agranulocytosis. Conclusion: Methimazole-induced agranulocytosis is a serious and potentially deadly adverse event. In this group of patients, mortality was high and the use of stimulating factor did not decrease the recovery time.

Keywords : Agranulocytosis; methimazole; antithyroid agents; Graves’ disease; drug toxicity.

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