@HelenYH – The reasons for antibody fluctuation aren’t fully understood at this point. Nor is it well understood why some patients have mild eye involvement, others have severe eye involvement, and still others end up with pretibial myxedema. This would be a great area for research! We are fellow patients here, not docs, so we can’t speculate on the course of your Graves’, but it’s not uncommon to need a dosage adjustment with anti-thyroid drugs. I can personally see a correlation between stress and seeing my levels head towards hypER.
@Caro – Yes, TSI is specific to the antibodies that cause *stimulation* of the thyroid gland, while TRAb does not differentiate between blocking and stimulating antibodies. Anti-TPO antibody testing is more commonly used to diagnose a patient who is hypO with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis – although a fairly large percentage of Graves’ patients will test positive for these antibodies as well. Hope this helps!
