Endemic cognitive deficiency

Iodine deficiency or iodine deficiency disorders are one of the biggest worldwide public health problems. In 1990, 1.6 billion people, which constitutes nearly one-third of the worlds population, were at risk of iodine deficiency disorders (Delange, 1994). These disorders include not only endemic goiter with impaired thyroid functions, but also increased perinatal mortality, growth retardation, and impaired cognitive development. The most important consequence of severe iodine deficiency... 

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. 

Endemic cretinism is a complex syndrome involving a triad of severe sensory, motor and cognitive defects. The condition is related to iodine deficiency and it can be prevented by iodine prophylaxis of the mother before or very early in pregnancy The frequency of... 

When dealing with starvation, individual nutritional factors tend not to be assessed. Yet lack of specific micronutrients could very well affect cognition. Certainly, dietary iodine deficiency is implicated in endemic cretinism with marked, often irreversible, mental retardation, deaf-mutism, and motor defects. While endemic goiter afflicts 200 million people worldwide, only in regions of severe deficiency are infants born cretinous. 

F. Trimarchi, Defective neuromotor and cognitive ability in iodine deficient schoolchildren of an endemic goiter r ion in Sicily, J Clin Endocrinol Metab 70 379 (1990). 

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