[Congenital hypothyroidism. Comparison of neuropsychological development of monozygotic twins]

Early treated congenital hypothyroidism (CH) allows a normal neuropsychological development in many cases, but sometimes light neuromotor, linguistic, behavioural disturbances are described. In this work we compare two 9 year old twins to study the direct influence of CH in the neuropsychological development, eliminating variables linked to environment and the genetic aspects; one of the twins is affected by early treated congenital hypothyroidism, the other doesn't show any somatic, motor, linguistic, cognitive or behaviour affection. Our intention is to value the influence of CH in the neuropsychological development eliminating the variables linked to environment and to the genetic aspects. From this study emerges that both the somatic and neuropsychological development of the two twins are globally identical still, slight differences could possibly be pointed out during the evaluations, in the their neuropsychological performances. The psychomotor development of the hypothyroid twin resulted to be normal, but slower than the normal twin in any time. In the light of these results we can hypothesize that the differences in the global development are linked to the presence of congenital hypothyroidism although early treated in one of them, because the other variables linked to the genetic, environmental and socio-cultural factors are of no relevance whatsoever in this case. The two sisters are actually genetically and phenotypically identical, and both subject to the same familiar dynamics and receive the same education.