Iodine deficiency, supplements affect thyroid cancer risk in children exposed to radioact...( This risk was three times higher in iod...),Health

This risk was three times higher in iodine-deficient areas than in other areas. Potassium iodide supplementation was associated with one-third the risk of radiation-related thyroid cancer compared with no supplementation. Potassium iodide was used in the former Soviet Union for goiter prophylaxis and was distributed, mainly in Belarus, to children evacuated after the Chernobyl accident.

"Both iodine deficiency and iodine supplementation appear to be important and independent modifiers of the risk of thyroid cancer after exposure to I-131 in childhood. This result has important public health implications in the case of exposure to radioactive iodines in childhood that may occur after radiation accidents or during medical diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Indeed, stable iodine supplementation in iodine-deficient populations may reduce the subsequent risk of radiation-related thyroid cancer in these situations," the authors write.

In an editorial, John D. Boice Jr., of the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville, Md., and the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn., raises questions for future research on the association between thyroid cancer and exposure to I-131 in childhood. These new findings, he writes, provide "new and, if confirmed, provocative information on the risk of radiation-induced thyroid cancer and on the modifying role of diets deficient in stable iodine and of administering iodine supplements months after the exposure has occurred."

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Contact: Sarah L. Zielinski
jncimedia@oupjournals.org
301-841-1287
Journal of the National Cancer Institute
17-May-2005

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