Mine is apparently idiopathic---i had an MRI with contrasts that showed nothing---my endo said that sometimes some cells just stop working. I did lose quite a bit of blood after having my third child---but she told me that if I had sheehan syndrome, that I would not have been able to have anymore children.
I just recently read an article about sheehan syndrome that said it can be mild---to severe---mentioned 3 different levels. It also said that the symptoms can come on within days, or that it can take decades for the symptoms to come on---I would assume that would have to be someone with mild damage.
The article also said that sometimes the pituitary hormones stop producing so slowly over time, and the symptoms come on so gradually, that some people don't even realize they have it, I guess until it gets bad enough to cause obvious symptoms.
I knew that my secondary adrenal insufficiency wasn't the most common thing---but I didn't know central hypothyroidism was so rare.
I have a number of deficiencies not only with my hormones, but also with certain vitamins and minerals.
My GI says I am "complicated."
Central hypothyroidism is a rare cause of hypothyroidism. It's precise prevalence is unknown, but is estimated as 0.005% in the general population. Numbers wise, estimated prevalence of approximately 1 in 80,000 to 1 in 120,000.
This is the most frequent cause of central hypothyroidism is a pituitary adenoma (benign tumour) accounting for more than 50% of cases in most of the studies.
Causes of central hypothyroidism:
Classic causes:
Space-occupying lesions (brain or pituitary; pituitary adenoma, craniopharygioma, etc.)
Radiation
Vascular disease (Sheehan syndrome, etc.)
Nonclassic causes:
Traumatic brain injury or subarachnoid hemorrhage
Drug-induced (bexarotene, carbamazepine, etc)
Growth hormone therapy
Infection (lymphocytic adenohypophysitis, lymphocytic hypophysitis)
Set point diseases (infant's born to mothers with inadequately controlled
Graves' disease, etc)
Genetic mutations
Idiopathic
In most cases, central hypothyroidism occurs concurrently with other pituitary hormone deficiencies.