Scots babies IQ s jeopardised by iodine lack
The mental development of a significant number of unborn babies in Scotland is at risk because pregnant women are failing to take sufficient iodine in their diet according to medical scientists at the University of Dundee.
Professor Robert Hume at the University of Dundee's Tayside Institute of Child Health has found in a recent study that of 400 pregnant women investigated in Tayside, 40% consumed less than half the recommended intake of iodine. He believes that the government must act to make it compulsory for manufacturers to add iodine to salt or to multi vitamins dispensed to women during pregnancy.
Professor Robert Hume: "This is a serious problem that appears to have gone unrecognised in the UK. Ours is the first study to have been carried out here and the results are worrying. The science is very clear about the effects of iodine deficiency for unborn babies - irreversible mental retardation to different degrees.
"In most of the expectant mothers the deficiency is not severe and there will be no clinical signs of illness. But the effects are nevertheless serious. Studies in Spanish and Italian schoolchildren have shown that those who are mildly or moderately deficient in iodine have, on average, a lower intelligence and are, overall, less mentally developed than children of the same age who consume adequate amounts of iodine."
Preliminary results of a study on 300 schoolchildren in Tayside appear to confirm Hume's findings.
Iodine is important for the developing foetus. If the mother, due to insufficient iodine, does not supply enough thyroid hormones at a critical period, the development of the foetal brain is affected and mental potential is significantly curbed. Severe deprivation is associated with cretinism - when babies are mentally retarded and may also be deaf and mute.
The most visible sign of lacking iodine is goitre, which shows up as a lump in the neck due to the thyroid gland growing to compensate for low amounts of circulating iodine.
Most of our iodine intake is from eating sea fish, sea food and dairy
products.
Anyone consuming a diet rich in these foods will ensure their needs
(100-200 micrograms a day) are covered. Requirements during pregnancy and
breastfeeding are greater. But there are sectors of the population who
don't eat any or enough of this group of foods.
The solution, says Hume, is surprisingly simple. "Adding tiny amounts of iodine to the diet takes total care of the problem. Switzerland have done this with great success. Where goitre was endemic in the population it has now been wiped out."
In the UK it has never been compulsory for manufacturers to add iodine to salt . Cerebos is one of very few, perhaps the only, brand to be iodised.
Until recently a fluke event in the dairy industry ensured some iodine consumption via dairy products. Farmers used an iodine based disinfectant on cows' udders during milking and inevitably some dripped into the milk. That practice has now changed and iodine is now only used to sterilize milking equipment after the process is over.
Professor Hume is lobbying MPs to have the law on iodising salt changed and plans to take his case to the European Parliament in November.
"I believe what we have found in Tayside is only the tip of the iceberg. The signs are that the problem is much more widespread in Scotland, the UK and across Europe where iodine deficiency is serious enough for 11% of the population to have goitres. The science is well known, the solution is simple. What we require is government action."