Correspondents' Correspondence
LAND, THOMAS
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Controlling Goiter Brussels-a modest vaccination...
...Backed by the Zaire Institute of Scientific Research, the program grew out of the stunning discovery by a team of doctors from Belgium that the disease is linked to the cassava plant-a staple in many developing nations-and can be prevented by the administration of simple and inexpensive injections of iodine...
...Only Indonesia, Ghana and the countries of East Africa appear to have static or slightly falling output...
...According to a United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) specialist, a group led by Dr...
...Cassava contains cyanogenic glucosides...
...That, in turn, inhibits the iodine intake by the thyroid gland...
...Andre-Marie Ermans of the Department of Isotopes at the Saint-Pierre Hospital in Brussels, "observed striking differences in goiter incidence between one part of the island and another...
...About 1 million people in the Ubangi area, the FAO specialist notes, have goiter...
...In India, the intercropping of cassava with peanuts has proved successful in Kerala State, and is spreading...
...When ingested, these yield another substance called thiocyanate, as a by-product...
...And each year the number rises...
...The doctors are now in the process of vaccinating the population with intramuscular injections of an iodine suspension in oil that diffuses into the body over a period of up to seven years...
...The research that led to this breakthrough began on Idjiwi Island in Lake Kivlu, Zaire...
...Hundreds of millions of people depend on it as their major single source of carbohydrate...
...Among these, up to 10 per cent are affected with cretinism, and an unknown number suffer from varying degrees of mental retardation...
...Thailand's output has jumped nearly 20 per cent from a year ago...
...The Zaire project is being used to test the Belgian doctors' findings...
...Use of the crop is also rapidly expanding in the Far East...
...A thorough survey helped them pinpoint the one factor that was responsible for the difference, the cassava...
...The scientists have confirmed that a steady diet of cassava "contributes to inhibiting iodine intake by the thyroid, and found that 60-70 per cent of the people in the region have endemic goiter...
...During the first half of 1978, the volume of world trade in cassava was up by nearly 20 per cent...
...If all goes as expected, the procedure may soon be adopted worldwide.-thomas Land...
...The discovery is especially important because cassava is such a ubiquitous crop...
...Metabolic studies and animal experiments enabled them to unveil the mechanism of action...
...and increases have been recorded in Malaysia, Vietnam and elsewhere...
...Controlling Goiter Brussels-a modest vaccination program in the Ubangi region of Zaire may go down in medical history as the crucial first step toward eradicating one of the most widespread ailments in the Third World: goiter (an enormous enlargement of the thyroid gland, frequently accompanied by cretinism...
...Substantially more cassavas are being planted this year than last in Zaire, Angola, Nigeria, Brazil (the world's largest cassava producer), and several other Latin American countries...
Vol. 61 • November 1978 • No. 23
