Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Belarus is included into an iodine deficiency region of Central Europe. Therefore the National program widely was introduced from 1999. This program included salt iodization with KIO₃, using of iodizated salt in the food industry and in the field of catering.

The purpose of the research is iodine status monitoring in the Republic of Belarus from 1999 to 2012.

The investigations included determination of the thyroid gland volume by ultrasonography and urinary iodine excretion.

Analysis of studies conducted in Belarus on the iodine status assessment showed that simple nontoxic goiter incidence for the period since 1998 fell with 379.9 people per 100.000 population to 31.91 in 2012 in adults. Reduction of the goiter incidence correlated positively with the urinary iodine excretion increasing. Since 2004 urine iodine excretion monitoring showed the sustainable maintenance of targets in random samples of the population. The median urinary iodine excretion rose from 46.9 μg/l in 1999 to 184 μg/l in 2012.

Conclusion: According to the presented results Republic of Belarus belongs to the countries with sufficient iodine intake. Due to the complex of problem solution, adequate iodine consumption in a food is almost reached in Belarus and significantly the thyroid gland diseases prevalence decreased. This results were confirmed in 2013 ICCIDD in published results iodine intake assessment in the world.