The year 2020 marks the centenary of the publication of a classic study by American physicians D. Marine and O. Kimball on the effectiveness of endemic goiter prevention in children in Akron, Ohio. Although goiter has been known from immemorial times, there is still a problem with determining the normal size of the thyroid gland, without which the diagnosis of goiter remains extremely subjective. For example, in Sweden over the past 20 years, not a single case of endemic goiter has been registered, which is not surprising: the country eliminated this pathology decades ago, and the median urinary iodine concentration indicates the optimal iodine intake. Cases of sporadic goiter in children in Sweden are also rare — no more than 6–8 per year. But in Belarus, with the same population (about 10 million), about 2900 cases of goiter in children, both endemic and sporadic, are recorded annually despite the fact that, due to the extensive use of iodized salt since the beginning of the 2000s, there is no iodine deficiency. The incidence of goiter in children, however, having decreased many times over the past 20 years, remains 3 times higher than in Russia, where iodine prophylaxis, if carried out on a limited scale. From the experience of Belarus, Sweden and Russia, we see that the main thing when assessing data on the incidence of goiter and other thyroid diseases associated with iodine deficiency should be not absolute numbers, but the trend of these indicators over the past years. This information should be more actively used by endocrinologists in Russia to assess the effectiveness of preventive measures both at the regional and federal levels.

Thyroid dysfunction is relatively common in pregnancy. The American Thyroid Association (ATA) published its most recent guidelines regarding the management of thyroid disorders in pregnancy in 2017. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has recently published an updated practice bulletin for thyroid disease in pregnancy that supersedes its previous guidance published in 2015. A comparison of the similarities and differences between the clinical guidelines from the ATA and ACOG can serve to highlight areas of uncertainty where additional studies are needed and may also demonstrate areas where endocrinologists and obstetricians may elect differing approaches to clinical care. The ACOG and ATA guidelines recommend similar approaches to the interpretation of thyroid function testing during gestation and to the management of thyroid cancer, thyroid nodules, gestational thyrotoxicosis, and postpartum thyroiditis Both strongly recommend levothyroxine (L-T₄) treatment for overtly hypothyroid pregnant women, and both recommend against the use of T₃-containing thyroid hormone preparations when treating hypothyroidism in pregnancy.

Laboratory diagnosis of endocrine diseases has undergone many important changes over the past decades, despite the progress of thyroid function immunoassays technologies interferences cannot be completely excluded. These interferences can affect measurement of analyte which leads to misinterpretation and subsequent wrong clinical decisions, the probability of which is about 1%. However, the scale of the problem may be greater due to the lack of awareness to the problem among doctors and the lack of laboratory screening for interfering factors. These factors can be both endogenous and exogenous, bind both to antibodies to the analyte and to the reagent in the test system. The specificity of the immunoassay depends not only on the binding properties of antibodies, the activity of reagent, but also on the composition of the test system and the format of the methodology (non-competitive two-site or “sandwich” and competitive assays).

This review provides a description of the main interferences that can affect the measurement of thyroid hormones, in particular thyroid stimulating hormone, free thyroxine and triiodothyronine, calcitonin, and demonstrates clinical cases reported in the literature over the past few years.

About one third of the world’s population is deficient in one or more micronutrients, with the most common deficiencies in iodine, iron, zinc, vitamin A and folate. Deficiency of one or more essential vitamins and minerals is usually the result of poor nutrition and / or insufficient absorption of micronutrients as a result of infectious and inflammatory diseases. It is possible that the deficiency of certain trace elements, in turn, can aggravate iodine deficiency and contribute to dysfunction of the thyroid gland. There are assumptions about the relationship between the content of iodine, selenium, iron, zinc in the human body and the level of thyroid hormones. Zinc is a vital trace element for all living organisms, participating in many biochemical processes in cells, including cell differentiation and division, its growth, cell transport, transcription, protein synthesis, RNA and DNA synthesis, and DNA replication. Its role as an antioxidant and participation in the functioning of both innate (T, NK and NKT cells) and adaptive immunity (anti-inflammatory cytokines) are very important. This review will consider the role of zinc in the synthesis and metabolism of thyroid hormones.

European Society of Endocrinology regularly receives reports that patients with endocrine disorders like autoimmune ­thyroiditis, have been declined to receive a COVID-19 vaccination. This prompted the community to publish information that vaccination recommendations for patients with compensated endocrine disease should not differ from those for the general population.