I understand an elevated TPO level destroys your thyroid.
What I don’t understand is, are the symptoms people have with Hashimoto’s caused by the lack of thyroid hormones only or are the Thyroid Peroxide Antibodies effecting many things in the body besides the thyroid. If the they affect more than the thyroid, what are they doing?
In: 4
The anti-TPO is only attacking the thyroid. They are very specific to it. The antibodies allow the white blood cells of the body to recognise the thyroid as something to attack (wrongly recognise obviously), but for this explanation I’m just going to say the antibodies cause the damage so as to not jump between terms. Just know it’s not as simple as antibody attaches and kills the cells without anything else involved.
Antibodies, whether it is fighting infection, or when its the immune system gone wrong and are autoantibodies against something in you, are each specific to one thing. So anti-TPO are against specific parts on cells in the thyroid. Measles antibodies recognise bits on the measles virus and attach and kill it. Etc
If an antibody is against some protein that is found on multiple types of tissues, then it will affect all those tissues throughout the body, such as what happens in SLE/lupus.
Because the target of antiTPO is only found in the thyroid, it is the only organ affected. The antibodies by themselves, floating in the blood or elsewhere in the body, don’t cause symptoms. It is only the destruction of the thyroid and then the lack of thyroid hormones that causes the symptoms.
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