Pregnant Women With Thyroid Disease Can Protect Fetus With Treatments

Children born to women who suffer from thyroid disease during a pregnancy have significantly lower IQs and a decrease in motor skills, language and reading abilities. However, treatment during pregnancy can prevent the deficits, according to researchers from the Foundation for Blood Research in Scarborough, Maine. The team examined stored blood samples taken from more than 25,000 pregnant women between 1987 and 1990 and identified 62 who had low levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone. The children from those pregnancies were identified and compared to those of 124 women who had normal thyroid levels.

The team reports in today’s New England Journal of Medicine that the children of mothers suffering from hypothyroidism had an average IQ of 100, compared to an average of 107 among the control group. Fifteen percent of the hypothyroid group had an IQ below 85, compared to only 5% of the control group.

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--Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II