TSHR and autoimmune thyroid disease: The other mechanism is due to the modulation of the expression of the TSHR in the thymus, which highlights the role of central tolerance, and it is influenced by the expressions of autoantigens (in this case, the TSHR) inside the thymus (in the process of the negative selection of clones of autoreactive TLs); therefore, the TSHR SNPs could influence the level of the expression itself in the thymus, which is a potential trigger of thyroid autoimmunity.