If you have symptoms or signs of the complications of Graves’ disease, your doctor will probably ask you if you have a family history of the condition and order one or more of the following tests:
A blood test to check your levels of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) and other thyroid hormones. With Graves’ disease your TSH levels are usually suppressed and your other hormones are elevated.
Lab tests to look for the antibodies that cause Graves’s disease. If you don’t have them, that’s a sign that your hyperthyroidism is caused by something else.
A radioactive iodine uptake test that uses small doses of radioactive iodine to watch how much of it is taken up into your thyroid from your bloodstream. Your body normally uses iodine to make thyroid hormones, so if it takes in a lot of the radioactive iodine it is a sign that it is working harder than it needs to.
A thyroid scan to see where the radioactive iodine travels in your thyroid gland. If it goes all over your thyroid, that suggests you have Graves’ disease, because with other causes of hypothyroidism, only some parts of the gland are involved.
