TPO and autoimmune disease: Moving on to another study by Posselt RT and colleagues examining a cohort of 790 patients, among whom 649 individuals suffered from an autoimmune disease, including 58 with SSc, and 141 represented control subjects, anti-TPO antibodies associated with hypothyroidism were found to be more frequent in the SSc group (20.6%) compared to the control group (5.6%), the difference being statistically significant.