A Study of Urinary Excretion of Iodine in Malnourished (Children)

Aim:-To study the Urinary excretion of Iodine in malnourished (children) subjects. Methodology: Study design-Study to carry out IDD in hospital attended (children) subjects due to different nutritional and non-nutritional disorders. Results: Results of the urinary excretion of iodine are given in table 11. No clinical evidence of goiter was detected in the study groups specially which was examined in age 3-12 years. Urinary iodine varied from 2.5-31-mg/ml. Mean � SD of urinary iodine excretion was found to be 12.8 � 9.2 mg/ dl. The prevalence of median value was found to be 10 mg/dl. The prevalence of different grades of IDD is given in table (11). According to ICCIDD classifications, 58.8 of the subjects were found to be normal (urine iodine excretion more than 10 mg/dl). Mild IDD were seen in 23.5 % of the subjects (whose urinary iodine excretion was 5-9.9 mg/dl). Moderate IDD were observed in 17.6% (urinary iodine excretion was 2-4.9mg/dl). The incidence of severe forms of IDD in (less than 2mg/dl) the subjects studied was nil. Discussion: Though various methods of assessing iodine deficiency are available today, we applied both biochemical and clinical evaluation of the subjects. There was no evidence of severe IDD in the study group. The statistical analysis revealed only mild to moderate degree of IDD. Median urinary iodine excretion was 10mg/dl which was less than that reported by Pandav et al (1994) in Delhi School children. He reported a value of 19.8 mg/dl, which was more than the mean urinary iodine of 6.5 mg/dl and 4.8mg/dl reported in 1981 and 1979, respectively. However, he reported that 24.9% of School children had urinary iodine les than 10 mg/dl. In this study we found that 41.1% of malnourished children had urinary iodine less than 10mg/dl. This indicates that through their daily diet. It is suggested that strengthening of IDD programmes is the only solution to reduce the prevalence rate.