Hi, Lynne.
My endo completely took me off the PTU too. There’s a contributor to the alt.support.thyroid board who says he is a doctor of nuclear medicine, and his posts are usually very factual and helpful. He wrote recently that it is believed that the antithyroid medications can interfere with the effectiveness of RAI, which is why the doctors take you off of them for a week or so before you have it. He also said that you then have to wait several days before going back on them. It makes sense. They interfere with the thyroid’s ability to take up iodine (and, by extension, make thyroid hormone). But since you WANT the radioactive iodine to get into the thyroid, you wouldn’t want to be taking something that would prevent it from getting there. My own guess about why some doctors then prescribe that you go back on it after RAI has to do with how hyper you are. Perhaps in some cases, if the thyroid hormone levels have been in the stratosphere, they want to add the antithyroid meds after RAI to assure that you don’t get to toxic levels. For others, whose levels may have been lower to start out with, they can just provide beta blockers to ease the symptoms. But that’s a guess.
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