EXPERIMENTAL COLLOID GOITER*

Abstract

Systematic comparative studies of goiters from different localities have shown that in mountainous regions with severe endemicity most goiters are composed of small acini and are poor in colloid, whereas in level regions the most common type is the colloid goiter. Only in those areas where the diffuse and nodular colloid goiter prevails, does one meet frequently with hyperthyroidism and Graves’ disease, while the goiter in mountainous regions is more often associated with a deficient thyroid function. Marine (10) has pointed out that colloid goiter does not develop from a normal gland by distension of the follicles with colloid, hut that the thyroid enlargement is always initiated as an active hypertrophy and hyperplasia. lie regards colloid goiter as an involutional stage of hyperplastic goiter. Marine’s view is not supported by my own histologie studies of human goiter. In surgical and autopsy material obtained in Kansas, I have never seen the small-follicular, colloid-poor parenchymatous goiter, the prototype of adolescent goiter in mountainous regions. I am therefore led to believe that in North America and other level countries, the thyroid reacts to the goiter agent with dilatation of the acini due to increased secretion of colloid and that the colloid goiter develops as a rule directly from the normal thyroid gland.