non-thyroidal illness syndrome in a pediatric intensive care unit during covid-19 era

Background: non-thyroidal illness syndrome (ntis) is defined as a condition that occurs during acute illness. in this study, we evaluated thyroid function tests in pediatric patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) infection who were admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit (picu) and compared them with children admitted to the picu due to other disordersmaterials and methods: this was a cross-sectional study where all patients between the ages of 1 month and 16 years admitted to the covid-19 referral hospital picus were evaluated over a 6 month period. a checklist was used to gather patient information. thyroid hormones evaluated included; measurements of free t3, t3, t4 and tsh on the first day of admission data was analyzed using the spss 21 statistical package.results: a total of 73 patients were evaluated during the 6 month study period. 40 (54.8%) of them were male and 53(45.2%) were female. the mean age of the study population was 5.9±4.3 years.13 patients were admitted due to sars-cov-19 infection.thyroid function consistent with non thyroidal illness syndrome was observed in 25(34.2%) of these patients. the level of t3 and ft3 in patients with covid-19 were significantly lower than in patients without covid-19 infection (p<0.05). body temperature in patients with abnormal thyroid tests was significantly higher than in patients with normal thyroid tests (p=0.040).conclusion: we found that one-third of children admitted to the picu had ntis. we suggest that ft3 can be a marker of covid-19 patient severity, as its lower levels were observed in pediatric patients admitted to the picu.