There is an ongoing debate about whether there is any relationship, and if there is, what it is. The newest study that I know about came out a little over a year ago in the New England Journal of Medecine. You can access an abstract of the study, and an editorial about it, by going to http://www.nejm.com and running a search. I think I used the word “Graves” to pull up the article but I’m not sure. I think it was in the January, 1998 volume of the Journal. A quick synopsis of the findings of that study showed that approximately 15% of people who have RAI have a TEMPORARY worsening of their eye condition. ” Temporary” was not defined, neither was “worsening”, in either the abstract or the editorial. Approximately three percent of people on antithyroid drugs had a worsening of their eye condition during the time period of the study. People who had RAI AND a course of prednisone had no worsening, temporary or otherwise, during the study.
The one caution about using study results is that there can (and will) be subsequent studies developed to try to test out the results of a previous one. Sometimes they reinforce the findings, often they do not. So it is a continuous progression of information, sometimes feeling like two steps forward, one step back.
Bobbi