Thyroid hormones play an essential role in metabolism, growth and differentiation. As pleiotropic hormones they profoundly affect the development and function of nearly every tissue. It is therefore vital for most vertebrate organisms that the concentrations of thyroid hormones are controlled in an exact way in line with current physiological demands.



Although the principles of thyrotropic feedback control have been described decades ago, we have still not yet gained a comprehensive understanding of its dynamics.ecently, significant progress has been made with mathematical modelling of thyroid homeostasis. However, due to nonlinear interactions, these cybernetic models cannot simultaneously describe the static and dynamic behaviour of the processing structure. This gap may be filled with computer simulations that additionally provide more intuitive insight into the dynamics of thyrotropic feedback.