Grave’s Disease Samples for Research

Bay Biosciences provides high-quality, fresh frozen Grave’s Disease Samples for Research from Grave’s disease, thyroid eye disease (TED) patients and age matched normal healthy donors.

Fresh frozen serum, K2EDTA plasma and matched PBMCs from unique Grave’s Disease thyroid eye disease (TED) patients are provided for research and healthy donors samples for controls.

Grave’s Disease Overview

Grave’s disease is an autoimmune disease that causes a condition called hyperthyroidism. Specifically, with this condition, your thyroid gland creates too much thyroid hormone in the body. Furthermore, Graves’ disease is one of the most common forms of hyperthyroidism.

In particular, in Grave’s disease, your immune system creates antibodies known as thyroid-stimulating immunoglobulins. Consequently, these antibodies then attach to healthy thyroid cells. As a result, they can cause your thyroid to create too much thyroid hormone.

Moreover, thyroid hormones affect many aspects of body processes, including nervous system function, brain development, body temperature, as well as other important things.

Without treatment, hyperthyroidism can eventually lead to:

Symptoms of Grave’s Disease

Graves’ disease and hyperthyroidism share many of the same symptoms.

These symptoms can include the following conditions:

Grave’s Dermopathy

Some people with Graves’ disease will experience Graves’ dermopathy.

In particular, with this condition, you’ll notice reddened, thickened skin around your shins or on the tops of your feet. Moreover, while Graves’ dermopathy is often mild, it can potentially cause some pain and discomfort.

Graves Ophthalmology

Graves’ disease can also cause Graves’ ophthalmopathy (GO).

Specifically, this condition develops when your immune system begins to attack eye tissue and muscle, resulting in swollen and inflamed eye sockets. Consequently, this inflammation can cause your eyelids to retract, thereby making your eyes seem enlarged and bulging.

You might also notice:

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK)  estimates that, in fact, about 30 percent of people who develop Graves’ disease will get a mild case of GO. Furthermore, up to 5 percent will have more severe symptoms.

In addition, mild cases of GO might improve on their own. However, since rare complications can include vision loss, it’s best to mention any eye symptoms you experience to your care team, even mild ones. Therefore, be sure to follow any recommended treatment guidelines.

Causes of Grave’s Disease

Your immune system usually produces proteins known as antibodies in order to fight against foreign invaders like viruses and bacteria. However, if you have an autoimmune disease like Graves’ disease, then your immune system begins to fight against healthy tissues and cells in your body.

Specifically, with Graves’ disease, instead of producing antibodies to target a specific invader, your immune system mistakenly produces thyroid-stimulating immunoglobulins. As a result, these antibodies then target your own healthy thyroid cells.

Moreover, scientists know that people can inherit the ability to make antibodies against their own healthy cells. Nevertheless, they have yet to find a clear cause of Graves’ disease or determine who will develop it.

Furthermore, experts believe it’s possible that your genes and a virus or other external trigger both play a part in its development.

Risks of Grave’s Disease

A few different factors may affect your chance of developing Graves’ disease. Firstly, these factors include the following:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Genetics (family history of the condition)
  • Stress

Specifically the disease typically develops in people younger than 40. Moreover, your risk also increases significantly if any family members have Graves’ disease. In fact, the NIDDK says that women develop it 7 to 8 times more frequently than men.

Additionally, your risk also increases if you have another autoimmune disease. For example these include the following:

Diagnosis of Grave’s Disease

Your doctor may request laboratory tests if they think you might have Grave’s disease. Furthermore, if anyone in your family has had Graves’ disease, your doctor may be able to narrow down the diagnosis based on your medical history and a physical examination.

However, they’ll still need to confirm the diagnosis through thyroid blood tests. In addition, a doctor who specializes in diseases related to hormones, known as an endocrinologist, may handle your tests and diagnosis.

Your doctor may also request some of the following tests:

  • Thyroid ultrasound
  • Radioactive iodine uptake test
  • Thyroid-stimulating hormone test
  • T3 test
  • Thyroid-stimulating immunoglobulin test
  • T4 test

Moreover, the combined results of these may help your doctor learn if you have Graves’ disease or another type of thyroid disorder.

Treatment of Grave’s Disease

There are three treatment options available for patients with Graves’ disease:

  • Antithyroid drugs
  • Radioactive iodine therapy
  • Thyroid surgery 

However, your care team may suggest using one or more of these options to treat the condition.

Antithyroid Drugs

Your doctor may prescribe antithyroid drugs, including propylthiouracil and methimazole, or beta blockers.

In addition, beta-blockers don’t treat the condition itself, but they can help lower the effects of your symptoms until other treatments begin to work.

Radioactive Iodine Therapy

Furthermore radioactive iodine therapy is one of the most common treatments for Graves’ disease. Specifically, this treatment requires you to take doses of radioactive iodine-131.

Typically, this usually requires you to swallow small amounts in pill form. Consequently, your doctor will explain any important precautions for you to take with this therapy.

Thyroid Surgery

Although thyroid surgery is an option, your doctor may not suggest it right away. Instead, they may recommend surgery if previous treatments haven’t worked or if they suspect you could have  thyroid cancer; however, thyroid cancer is rare with Graves’ disease.

Furthermore, pregnant patients can take antithyroid drugs such as PTU in the first trimester, and methimazole in the second trimester onwards.

Additionally, doctors might also recommend thyroid surgery if you’re pregnant and can’t take antithyroid drugs. In this case, they’ll wait to do the surgery until your second trimester because of the risk of miscarriage.

If surgery is necessary, your doctor will remove your entire thyroid gland, a procedure known as a total thyroidectomy. The goal of this surgery is to eliminate the risk of hyperthyroidism returning. Total thyroidectomy is the standard of care for people with Graves’ disease.

After surgery, you’ll need thyroid hormone replacement therapy on an ongoing basis. You may also need thyroid hormone replacement after radioactive iodine as well.

Summary

Without treatment, Graves’ disease can contribute to heart problems,  weak and brittle bones, and pregnancy complications. Prompt treatment, however, can improve your symptoms and help lower your chances of health complications.

Your doctor or healthcare specialist can offer more information about your treatment options, plus their benefits and risks.

biospecimens

Biospecimens

Bay Biosciences is a global leader in providing researchers with high quality, clinical grade, fully characterized human tissue samples, bio-specimens, and human bio-fluid collections.

Human biospecimens are available including cancer (tumor) tissue, cancer serum, cancer plasma, cancer peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). and human tissue samples from most other therapeutic areas and diseases.

Bay Biosciences maintains and manages its own biorepository, the human tissue bank (biobank) consisting of thousands of diseased samples (specimens) and from normal healthy donors for controls, available in all formats and types.

In fact, our biobank procures and stores fully consented, de-identified and institutional review boards (IRB) approved human tissue samples, human biofluids such as serum samples, plasma samples from various diseases and matched controls.

Also, all our human tissue collections, human biospecimens and human biofluids are provided with detailed, samples associated patient’s clinical data.

In fact, this critical patient’s clinical data includes information relating to their past and current disease, treatment history, lifestyle choices, biomarkers, and genetic information.

Additionally, patient’s data associated with the human biospecimens is extremely valuable for researchers and is used to help identify new effective treatments (drug discovery & development) in oncology, and other therapeutic areas and diseases.

Bay Biosciences banks wide variety of human tissue samples and human biological samples, including fresh frozen human biospecimens cryogenically preserved at – 80°C.

For example fresh frozen tissue samples, tumor tissue samples, formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE), tissue slides, with matching human bio-fluids, whole blood and blood-derived products such as human serum, human plasma and human PBMCs.

Bay Biosciences is a global leader in collecting and providing human tissue samples according to the specified requirements and customized, tailor-made collection protocols.

Please contact us anytime to discuss your special research projects and customized human tissue sample requirements.

Types of Biospecimens

Bay Biosciences provides human tissue samples (human specimens) and human biofluids from diseased and normal healthy donors which includes:

Moreover, we can also procure most human biospecimens and human biofluids, special collections and requests for human samples that are difficult to find. All our human tissue samples and human biofluids are procured through IRB-approved clinical protocols and procedures.

In addition, to the standard processing protocols, Bay Biosciences can also provide human biofluids such as human plasma, human serum, and human PBMCs bio-fluid samples. Using custom processing protocols; you buy donor-specific collections in higher volumes and specified sample aliquots from us.

Bay Biosciences also provides human biospecimens from normal healthy donors; volunteers, for controls and clinical research, Contact us Now.