Brain endemic cretinism

The method of detecting iodine supply levels and the evaluation of the effect of the lack or oversupply (Boyages, 1993) of iodine on the condition of the thyroid gland (its size, function and the impact on the autoimmunity process) and the resulting evaluation of the overall condition of health of an entire population (from the occurrence of endemic cretinism due to significant lack of iodine to mild occurrence of brain dysfunction due to lack of iodine during intrauterine development) problems in the development of the somatic. 

At the most severe end of the spectrum this manifests as endemic cretinism, but even mild iodine deficiency can affect cognitive development and subsequent intellectual abifi-ties, as well as, causing deficits in hearing and reproduction (Bleichrodt and Born, 1994 Dunn, 1996 Hetzel, 2004). Detailed consideration of the effects of iodine deficiency on brain function can be found in the chapter in the handbook entitled Iodine Deficiency and the Brain by Basil Hetzel. 

We conclude that iodine is essential for normal fetal brain development because of the critical role of the thyroid hormones, investigations are required into the postnatal period before the pathogenesis of endemic cretinism can be elucidated. 

B.S. Hetzel and A. Querido, Iodine deficiency, thyroid function, and brain development, "Endemic goiter and endemic cretinism", J.B. Stanbury and B.S. Hetzel eds., John Wiley Publ., New York (1980), pp. 461-472. 

What can the neurological data contribute to understanding of the pathophysiology of the brain in endemic cretinism Can neurological observations tell which systems are involved and when that Involvement occurred ... 

QUANTITATIVE HISTOLOGY STUDY ON BRAIN NERVOUS CELLS OF NEUROLOGICAL ENDEMIC CRETINS... 

These findings indicated that there was severe retardation in growth and differentiation of brain nervous cells of cretins, therefore this paper will give the morphological evidence for explanation of clinical manifestations of neurological endemic cretinism. 

In 1966, iodized oil was injected in residents of Papua New Guinea, where the severity of endemic goiter and cretinism was high. A follow-up study showed that cretinism disappeared almost completely from the offspring of mothers who received iodized oil. The effect of iodine supplementation on the survival of the fetus and on their brain development was established. 

What is needed now is a comparison of brain pathology in neurological cretinism and cerebral palsy and in myxedematous cretinism and sporadic congenital hypothyroidism there is also a need for study of the brain in endemic mental retardation. 

In order to evaluate the influence of prenatal iodine deficiency on the thyroid gland and brain in man, we studied therapeutically aborted fetuses collected from a severely iodine deficient endemic goiter and cretinism area before and after 5 year iodized salt utilization. Fetuses from a non-endemic area served as the normal controls . ... 

Although the materials studied in the present paper and the above mentioned differences were relatively small, the morphometric changes in the brains of certain iodine deficient fetuses are definite. The results suggest that prenatal iodine deficiency exhibits certainly a depressive influence on the brain in some of the fetuses in the endemic goiter and cretinism areas retarding its development. This might account for the neurological deficit of cretinism or cretinoid syndrome. 

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