Status of Iodine Nutrition in Europe: National Update, Austria

Abstract

Austria was a classical endemic goiter country due to wide spread and severe iodine deficiency with urinary iodine values of 35 μg/day¹ and a goiter prevalence in preadolescent children of almost 50%². A first effort to improve this situation was made already in 1923³ by establishing a prophylactic program with iodized salt but this program was discontinued a few years later due to economic and political turbulences. In 1963, however, iodized salt was introduced again by a law⁴ with set the iodization level at 10 mg KI/kg salt and said that this salt should be sold at normal prices to everybody, excepting those who specifically request salt without iodine. In surveys done in 1972 and 1978^5,6 a significant improvement of the situation was found with a reduced goiter prevalence in children of only 12%, while urinary iodine/g creatinine remained below normal with a mean of < 65,3 μg. Goiter prevalence in the population was still elevated, the sometimes huge goiters of previous decades and endemic cretinism had gone. Considering this situation the Austrian Society of Nuclear Medicine proposed for many years the increase of the amount of iodine in salt to 20 mg KI/kg. It was partly the “fallout” of the Tschernobyl accident that the austrian authorities became active again and wrote into a law the requested increase of salt iodization in 1990⁸. Several analyses of the effect of this law on the austrian population have been made recently or are still under way and some already available data are presented.