Research

Hormonal

Thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) directly promotes hepatic lipogenesis and cholesterol biosynthesis, worsening NAFLD and hypercholesterolemia, independent of its role in stimulating thyroid hormone production.

If you have high TSH levels, even if your T3/T4 are normal, it may contribute to fatty liver and high cholesterol. Treating hypothyroidism to normalize TSH might help improve these metabolic markers, although lifestyle changes remain the primary treatment for NAFLD.

ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
Taken together, these foregoing studies suggest that TSH may worsen hypercholesterolemia by increasing cholesterol biosynthesis, reducing cholesterol clearance, lowering LDLR, and worsen NAFLD by increasing lipogenesis, respectively.
Rohit A. Sinha et al. · Thyroid · 2019

Why this rating

Based on animal models and in vitro studies; human data is observational or derived from thyroidectomized patients with complex hormone replacements.

Source

Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease and Hypercholesterolemia: Roles of Thyroid Hormones, Metabolites, and Agonists

Rohit A. Sinha et al. · Thyroid · 2019

DOI 10.1089/thy.2018.0664

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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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