Blocking iodide is key to survival.

• Position: Nuclear Accidents - Brief article

Iodide entrapment in the thyroid gland is essential, and plays a key role in dysfunctions such as thyroid and breast cancers, thyroiditis, Graves-Basedow disease, and Hashimoto's disease. The tsunami-induced accident at Fukushima in Japan has revealed growing public concerns, as exposure to radioactive iodine increases the risk of cancer and birth defects. There is an urgent need to find radio-protective molecules to prevent and treat body contamination.

Yves Ambroise and colleagues at Biology and Technology Institute at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission identified an important class of compounds that efficiently blocks iodide transport by inhibiting the sodium iodide...