Study on iodine nutrition of pregnant women in Guizhou, China

Iodine intake of pregnant women in Guizhou,China
                     Background
Guizhou is a poor provinces of western China with 39 million, has a history of severe IDD. It was estimated there were more than 20,000 cretins in the province in1978. A salt iodination programm was initiated in 1978 in severely-affected areas, and spread to the whole province in 1985. Subsequently the nation universal salt iodization(USI) program in China was implemented in 1995. Since then monitoring has been done every two years, The monitoring programm in 2005 reported the UIC in schoolchildren aged 8-10 was 289.4µg/l, the goiter was 4.4% ,and population coverage with iodized salt was 99.12%. 
                    2006 study of pregrant women
from May to October 2006,  496 pregnant women were sampled from ten counties with varying population of minority groups( including  Miao, Buyi, Dong, Tujia and Han. peoples) in different location of Guizhou. UIC was measured in spot urine samples. The overall median UIC was 219µg/l,within the range of 150-249µg/l recommended for pregrant women by WHO. The percentage of women with a UIC<100µg/l was 18.7%.However, in two counties the median UIC was low, at 165- 172µg/l, and percentage of values <100µg/l were 32% and 41%, respectively. The were no significant difference in UIC among the different minority groups.
                     Conclusions  
The Chinese national USI programm has been in place for more than 10 years. The median UIC in pregnant women in Guizhou is well within the recommended range of 150-249µg/l.However, in some counties, the iodine intake of pregnant
women remains low. Therefore, in USI monitoring programms, pregnant women
 should be regularly included as one of the vulnerable target groups. Also, for
pregnant women with low iodine intake from USI, additional iodine
supplementation can be considered.