Athyreotic cretinism associated with thymic hypoplasia and amyloidosis of lymphoid tissue.

A child presenting at 5 months of age with Hemophilus influenzae meningitis was also found to be severely hypothyroid. The child died two years later from the complications of measles pneumonia. At autopsy, no thyroid tissue was found and the thymus was hypoplastic. Most of the lymphoid tissues were infiltrated by amyloid.It is possible that there was a combined developmental defect involving thyroid and thymus. The alternatives are that the association occurred purely by chance or that the severe hypothyroid state led to thymic insufficiency.