Iodine Status in the Elderly: Association with Milk Intake and Other Dietary Habits

Background: Iodine deficiency is still an issue with important consequences, not only in younger people, but also in the elderly.We proposed to assess iodine status in elderly females, to analyze their eating habits and to compare results with our previous findings on female from childhood to fertile age. Materials and Methods:This observational study that involved 189 menopausal women (51-86 years old) undergoing endocrinological evaluation at our center in the Veneto region, a northeast Italian area.We measured Urinary Iodine Concentration (UIC) from spot urine samples and participants were asked to fill in a food frequency questionnaire; we also collected data on bone metabolism from the hospital laboratory database network system.Results: The median UIC of the sample as a whole was 30 μg/l, corresponding to a moderate iodine deficiency.Among these subjects 47.7% were daily milk consumers: such women had a higher UIC than the occasional milk consumers (43 vs 30 μg/l, P= 0.0041).Regarding other dietary habits, a great proportion of women resulted undernourished; moreover the declining trend in milk consumption with increasing age is similar to the age-related decline in UIC and 24h-Urinary Calcium (U-Ca).Conclusions: women of menopausal age in our series were lacking in iodine because of reduced milk intake, in the contest of a major condition of global undernourishment.We confirm that milk is per se an important source of iodine if consumed in appropriate quantities.