Iodine status and prevalence of goitre in school going children in rural area.

Introduction: Iodine deficiency disorder (IDD) is one of the preventable major public health problems in India. It has been always thought that goitre was only found in the Himalayan goitre belt. Recent surveys outside the conventional goitre belt have identified foci of iodine deficiency in other parts of India.

Aim: 1) To assess the prevalence of goitre among school-going children in the age group of 6-15 years. 2) To find out the relationship of goitre prevalence with the salt intake and urinary iodine excretion. 3) To unfold the iodine nutritional status of the study population.

Material And Methods: The study was conducted from January 2005 to July 2006 in school children of 6-15 years of age, attending the 55 schools of Bellur hobli in the southern part of India. The clinical examination of all the 1600 children of the selected schools was done to detect and grade goitre. Urine and salt samples were collected from sub-samples (n = 400) to estimate the urinary iodine excretion level and iodine content in the salt respectively.

Results: The goitre prevalence in the study population was found to be 0.125%. Urinary iodine excretion (UIE) level of ≥ 100 mcg / l was found in 361 children (90.25%) and < 100 mcg/ l in 39 children (9.75%). Estimation of iodine content of the salt samples revealed that 363 (90.75%) consumed adequately iodised salt (> 15ppm) and 37 (9.25%) consumed inadequately iodised salt (< 15ppm).

Conclusion: Bellur Hobli is not an endemic area for goitre and there is no biochemical iodine deficiency in this population due to effective implementation of Universal iodization programme (UIP). It is reasonable to conclude that by achieving the universal iodisation of salt, IDD can be successfully eliminated from the community.