Study subjects
A total of 650 patients with GD and 1300 healthy controls were enrolled in this study.
Diagnosis of GD and GO according to clinical symptom and thyroid hormone level based on American thyroid association guidelines (Ross et al., 2016). Healthy volunteers were recruited from the same region, and they did not have any other autoimmune disease and were matched for sex and age with the patients with GD. The study was registered in the Chinese clinical trial registry (ChiCTR1900022398) and was approved by the Zunyi Medical University Ethics Committee (18-ZY-001). All of the procedures were in accordance with the declaration of Helsinki.