Thyroid Project

[deleted-532443]

Hello! I wanted to do a research project involving Hyperthyroidism and Hypothyroidism. However, I'm stuck on what exactly do I want to test? I know the topic I want to do, but what exactly I want to test/find out about the thyroid is making me confused. I was thinking about making an artificial thyroid gland for those who have thyroid issues, or maybe finding out exactly how do young teens and children know whether or not they have Hypothyroidism, and not just horomones?

[SciB]

Hi,

Medical research on thyroid hormones and their physiological effects is a great idea--the only problem is what are you going to do experiments on? There are strict rules for the use of mammals in studies and your school probably does not allow students to experiment on them. Likewise, human studies require institutional review board approval and monitoring and are most likely not doable for a science fair project.

To do the kinds of studies that you seem to be interested in I would recommend that you contact professors at nearby universities to find out if they might be willing to take you on as a student in their lab. Check their research interests first to find out if their lab does thyroid or hormonal research and learn as much about their work as possible before you talk to them. Doing a project in a university lab is very rewarding and you will learn a lot of valuable techniques but it also requires a LOT of your time and effort.

If you have additional questions and ideas, please post again and we will try to guide you into a project that is doable and worthwhile.

Good luck!

Sybee

[deleted-532443]

I was thinking about the implications about doing that, so I was thinking about doing something less time consuming but still about the hormones and thyroid. I was also just thinking about doing research from different case studies and sources about Hypothyroidism and draw a conclusion from the different amounts of research I have read, but I do not know if that is technically allowed for science fairs/research projects? If using meta analysis and systematic reviews instead of experimental research is allowed for science fairs, is it a good idea to use it? IS there any sort of science fairs you have seen or heard of that use this type of researching?

[SciB]

Hi,

Doing a research paper or review is usually not considered a science project. You need to ask a question in the form of a hypothesis and then design experiments to test it. I understand that the kind of lab experiments you want to do would require that you be able to work in a university research lab. This is possible but takes a lot of effort and a rather large commitment of time.

It is possible to access data online about thyroid genetics, hormones, and regulation and use it to answer questions but I don't know of a project that tells you exactly how to do that. A good place to start would be NCBI Gene: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene

There are tutorials to teach you how to use it effectively and you can always search Youtube for videos about using Gene to look for specific disease patterns or hereditary links.

You probably have done literature searches already, but that would also be a good place to try and find out how to use the internet to do research. Scientists publish papers using data obtained from internet sites and software, but it will take you some time and a lot of reading to find a path through all the scientific jargon. If you get stuck, send us a query describing exactly what you want to do with regard to hypothyroidism and we'll try to explain it in language we can all understand.

Good luck!

Sybee