Serum levels of immunoglobulins in marasmic infants.

The syndrome of protein-calorie malnutrition is associated with an increased frequency of infections which often precipitate or aggravate the state of malnutrition. The importance and the farreaching implications of the interaction between malnutrition and infections, a predominantly synergistic one, have been stressed by Scrimshaw, Taylor, and Gordon (1959) and more recently by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Nutrition (1967). Of the various mechanisms of the host's defences against infection, antibody production assumes an important but not an exclusive role. Antibody response in human malnutrition has been studied in the kwashiorkor type of malnutrition and in adults with severe protein depletion. No such studies have been reported in marasmic malnutrition, the much more prevalent type of human malnutrition (McLaren, 1966). Infants with kwashiorkor were able to produce antibodies against typhoid, poliomyelitis, and smallpox vaccines (Pretorius and De Villiers, 1962; Brown and Katz, 1965) and had normal levels of isohaemagglutinins (Kahn, Stein, and Zontendyk, 1957). Young adults with severe protein deficiency responded adequately to diphtheria toxoid (Balch, 1950; Havens, Bock, and Siegel, 1954). To our knowledge, only one study has been published reporting on the levels of immunoglobulins in kwashiorkor (Brown and Katz, 1965). The authors found a significant decrease in the levels of IgG immunoglobulins in the sera of 20 children with kwashiorkor as compared with 5 normal children. The serum levels of IgM and IgA were not statistically different from those of the normal children. The purpose of this communication is to report the levels of the serum immunoglobulins in infants with marasmic malnutrition.