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Iodine deficiency disorders and their elimination
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This article was originally published by Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd and was migrated to Scientific Scholar after the change of Publisher.
This book summarizes the current understanding of iodine deficiency as well as iodine excess and state of the art methods for IDD (Iodine deficiency disorders) elimination. It describes the history of iodine deficiency, its assessment, epidemiology, effect of severe, mild to moderate iodine deficiency, effects of iodine excess, salt iodization, non-salt food fortification programmes, iodine supplementation and environmental iodine uptake inhibitors.
Iodine requirements for pregnant and lactating women have been provided, which result in an increased median urinary iodine concentration to define a public health problem in pregnant women.
The book recommends the use of urinary iodine concentration to monitor impact. Blood TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone) and thyroglobulin may also be useful for assessing impact, but their use is still limited due to their high cost. The measurement of thyroid size by palpation or ultrasound was useful initially, but is less useful once salt iodization is established. For each impact indicator, this book provides information on biological features, methods of measurement, and criteria for selecting those methods and the interpretation of results.
Recent country-wise data on iodine status among school-going children and pregnant mothers are also provided. Impact of mild to moderate iodine deficiency and severe iodine deficiency has been discussed in detail. The most extreme consequences of severe iodine deficiency include endemic cretinism, which is also discussed.
The chapter on iodine excess has also been discussed in detail. Excess iodine exposure, particularly among individuals with underlying thyroid diseases has the potential for inducing hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism. This book has additional interesting topics such as environmental iodine uptake inhibitors which have been explained at length. Multiple graphs and tables are also included.
Overall, this book is of value to public health researchers, policy makers, medical students and managers of national programmes dealing with IDD. It is appropriate in size and concise in content. The information included in this book will be useful, and it will also contribute to the national goal of the elimination of IDD.
