[Psychological aspects of systemic approach to diagnostics of mental and immunological disorders in diffuse-nodular form of Hashimoto's thyroiditis].

Authors have studied 162 patients with the diffuse-nodular form of chronic autoimmune thyroiditis (AIT). Alexithymic personality type was found to be prevalent in patients in the euthyroid phase (51.9%). In autoimmune thyroiditis, alexithymia and certain cytokine parameters were correlated with psychopathological symptoms as asthenia, anxiety and depression which might be caused by their participation in the pathogenesis of non-psychotic mental disorders during the euthyroid phase. The linkage of alexithymia with certain emotional-personal parameters allows to regard it as one of the components of the integral personality characteristics. These findings show that alexithymia is not only an indirect risk factor of the autoimmune thyroiditis development but also a predictor of the disease course.