Maria Papaleontiou, M.D., to help revise hypothyroidism guidelines for American Thyroid Association

Maria Papaleontiou, M.D., of MEND has been selected as a co-chair in charge of revising the hypothyroidism guidelines for the American Thyroid Association. She and fellow co-chair, Jennifer Mammen, M.D., Ph.D., of Johns Hopkins, are leading the effort to update these guidelines for the first time since 2014.

“I am excited and honored to lead this effort. This is personal to me, as my clinical interest and research focus on thyroid disease, including hypothyroidism and thyroid hormone therapy,” Papaleontiou said. “Our goal is for this effort to yield an evidence-based recommendation, a guideline for patients and also a product we can disseminate across specialties for providers that take care of these patients.”

Papaleontiou is currently supporting the process of building a task force to participate in revising the guidelines. The task force will comprise of a panel of experts who will follow an evidence-based approach to develop a series of specific recommendations for the guidelines.

The co-chairs and panel will use GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations), a transparent framework for developing and presenting summaries of evidence that provides a systematic approach for making clinical practice recommendations. GRADE is commonly used when guidelines are produced by different organizations.

“Our goal is to convene an expert task force that has a breadth of expertise in hypothyroidism, that is international and diverse so we can have a representative product in the end,” Papaleontiou said.

The American Thyroid Association is a global medical society with approximately 1,700 members from around the world with a vision for “optimal thyroid health for all.”

Papaleontiou is also the Chair of the American Thyroid Association’s Women in Thyroidology.