Role of medical resource level in iodine deficiency disorder

Chen Xu,Zhen Liang,Yong-Jun Luo

doi:10.1186/s40779-017-0126-5

Abstract

BackgroundIodine deficiency disorders (IDDs) refer to a series of diseases caused by the human body's insufficient iodine intake. Edible salt became iodized in China in 1996, which yielded remarkable results. We have known that IDDs is associated with iodine in the human body, but it is not clear whether IDDs is related to medical resource level.MethodsWe collected the number of IDDs cases and an index for the level of medical resource from 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government in China. All data came from the China Statistical Yearbook of Health and Family Planning issued in 2013 by the Peking Union Medical College Publishing House. Data standardization and linear regression analysis were used.ResultsThe results showed that IDDs correlated with the number of beds in medical and health institutions, number of medical health personnel, number of medical and health institutions, total health expenditure, average health expenditure per capita, medical insurance for urban resident and new rural cooperative medical rural residents (P < 0.01). In a multiple linear regression, IDDs was most significantly associated with the number of beds in hospitals, the number of rural health personnel, the number of basic medical and health institutions and government health expenditure for these institutions.ConclusionBased on the experimental data, we concluded that IDDs had a positive connection with the medical resource level, and basic and rural areas had a more significant association with IDDs. This analysis provides new and explicit ideas for iodine prevention and control work in China.

Highlights

Iodine deficiency disorders (IDDs) refer to a series of diseases caused by the human body's insufficient iodine intake
The amount of iodine intake has a U-type curve relationship with thyroid disease [15, 16]; excessive intake of iodine would cause a high incidence of iodine goiters, iodine-induced hyperthyroidism [17, 18], and hypothyroidism [19], which could potentially develop into autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD) [20] and thyroid cancer [21, 22]
Should we draw conclusions based on mathematical statistics, we can determine that the average median urinary iodine concentration of children aged 8–10 years is 205.58 μg/L in 20 provinces, and Tianjin, Shanxi, Inner mogolia, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Hunan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Gansu, Qinghai provinces did not provide the data about the average medium urinary iodine concentration

Summary

Introduction

Iodine deficiency disorders (IDDs) refer to a series of diseases caused by the human body's insufficient iodine intake. In the 1970s, iodine deficiency disorders could be observed at different epidemic levels in China, with the threatened population amounting to approximately 370 million [3]; 35 million endemic goiter patients and 250 thousand endemic cretinism patients were observed [4, 5]. To prevent the population from the potential side effects caused by excessive iodine intake, the new national standard for salt iodization have been narrowed from 20 to 50 mg/kg to 18–39 mg/kg, which both lowers the iodine content in iodized salt and narrows down the range of iodine content allowed [13]. After implementation of iodized salt, cities near the deluged Yellow River appeared to have high levels of iodine originating from a water source, which presented an increased incidence of these diseases

Methods

Results

Conclusion