Study wrapper · #1330
Unilateral Graves' Disease Developing During Treatment With Tirzepatide in a Patient With Diabetes: A Case Report.
Editor's note
The clinically useful observation is a diagnostic trap rather than a drug effect: fatigue on an incretin agonist is common and easily attributed to the drug or to rapid weight loss, which is exactly how thyrotoxicosis gets missed here. As a single case report with no causal claim, it carries no weight on whether tirzepatide affects thyroid autoimmunity, and unilateral Graves' disease is rare in its own right. The takeaway is that new fatigue or palpitations during incretin therapy deserve thyroid function testing rather than assumption.
Plain-language abstract
A 59-year-old woman with type 2 diabetes on tirzepatide had good glucose control and weight loss, then developed fatigue and palpitations. Those symptoms were first put down to the drug itself, but testing showed an overactive thyroid with positive autoantibodies, and imaging localised the activity to one thyroid lobe — an unusual unilateral presentation of Graves' disease. Her symptoms and thyroid numbers improved quickly once antithyroid medication was started. The authors do not claim the drug caused it.