Word: thyroids
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Simple goiter (enlargement of the thyroid gland) is one of the few diseases which might be conquered by Act of Congress. Prevalent in a wide "goiter belt" running from western New York through the Great Lakes basin and across the plains to the Rockies, this type of goiter can be almost entirely controlled by a tiny amount of iodine in table salt. But thus far, Congress has rejected a law (such as Canada has) requiring all table salt in interstate commerce to be iodized...
...Public Health Reports, Dr. William H. Sebrell outlined the campaign's goal: not only to prevent goiter, but to spread the word that iodine is essential to bodily health. The thyroid gland takes up iodine from the bloodstream and uses it to form a hormone, thyroxine. In turn, thyroxine regulates many body functions, including heat production, brain development, sexual maturity, and the growth of hair, skin and bones. A shortage of such an element as iodine, said Dr. Sebrell, may not be indicated dramatically by serious illness: "Just as often, or oftener, the result may be lowered efficiency, nervousness...
Some types of thyroid cancer do not respond to this treatment. The cells cannot be trained to take up iodine and kill themselves. But many patients have been helped to some extent. In four of them the disease has been definitely checked, though not wiped out entirely...
...good example of the interaction of research and clinical study is the work of Rawson's group and of Dr. L. D. Marinelli on the treatment of thyroid cancer with radioactive iodine. Since the thyroid gland eagerly absorbs iodine (which it uses to make a hormone), doctors have hoped that a cancerous thyroid would absorb radioactive iodine 131 in sufficient quantity to kill the unruly cells. Unfortunately, this effort was none too successful. The normal thyroid took up nearly all the iodine. The cancerous thyroid cells, particularly the metastases in distant parts of the body, took up so little...
Trained Metastases. Dr. Marinelli and his associates worked out a neat method of dealing with this difficulty. First they removed the patient's normal thyroid and with it the original cancer. This left the metastases which, they found, often consisted of cancer cells that retained faint remnants of the normal function of the thyroid. With the normal thyroid gone, the degenerate cells awoke and began to act like thyroids. Stimulated by the proper drugs, they began taking up iodine and making it into thyroid hormones. Then Dr. Marinelli gave radioactive iodine to the patient. The tumors, acting as pinchhitting...