THIOURACIL IN THE TREATMENT OF HYPERTHYROIDISM COMPLICATING PREGNANCY AND ITS EFFECT ON THE HUMAN FETAL THYROID

Abstract

THIOURACIL has been in use for the past 4 years. Astwood (1) has reported its use in four pregnant patients without untoward results. Palmer (15) treated 3 pregnant women,one of whom delivered a normal child. Eaton (4) has reported 2 cases in which thiouracil was used. One of these was the only case in which the child's thyroid was enlarged at delivery and remained so for several months after birth, but the child was otherwise normal. Vogt (17) treated one pregnant patient with thiouracil; although she herself developed a marked enlargement of the thyroid, the child was normal. Only a few experimental papers have been published, including that of Goldsmith et al. (7) who recorded that newborn rats whose mothers had been treated daily with thiourea were both normal in weight and in external appearance as compared with the controls. He noted that the thyroid was slightly increased in weight and there was active hyperplasia characterized by high columnar epithelium with a limited amount of stainable colloid. These effects disappeared when the animals were placed on a laboratory stock diet.