Endemic Goiter in Greece: Epidemiologic and Genetic Studies1

Abstract

Ten villages in Greece affected with endemic goiter have been studied. Five of these, situated on mountains, are associated with an extensive soil erosion, whereas the other 5 are in the lowlands, but only 2 of them near the sea. None of these villages is situated on limestone soil. Examination of 12,032 persons has shown that the prevalence of goiter is high in prepubertal children of both sexes and in adult females, but low in adult males. There is an increased prevalence of goiter in the offspring of goitrous parents, but also in the wives of goitrous men, and this seems to point to the restricted family envioronment rather than to heredity as the main cause of the familial aggregation of goitrous cases. Furthermore, the sizes of the thyroid glands in the population studied form a continuous unimodal curve without an antimode, and this suggests that goiter is not an all-or-none condition and excludes any simple mode of inheritance. Taste sensitivity to phenylthiocarbamide does not show any difference between goitrous and nongoitrous persons, but in male smokers there is a higher proportion of nontasters than in nonsmoking males or females.