Acute gastroenteritis in Malaysian children: aetiological and therapeutic considerations.

Despite these advances, there is still a group of infants with AGE who despite conventional treatment and exclusion of all carbohydrates from the diet INTRODUCTION In recent years there have been a number of advances facilitating our understanding of the pathogenesis of acute gastroenteritis (AGE) in infancy and childhood. The discovery by Bishop et al. (1973) of the aetiological significance of the rotavirus has been confirmed by a number of other workers and it is now clear that the rotavirus is world-wide in distribution. The concept of toxigenic E. coli has replaced the unsatisfactory classification of pathogenicity of E. coli on the basis of serological types. Hopefully it should not be long before such toxigenic strains can be identified in routine diagnostic laboratories. The importance of acquired carbohydrate intolerance, complicating AGE is now well recognised. The ability to remove lactose enzymatically from cows' milk will hopefully provide a low cost palatable lactose-free milk acceptable to children in developing countries. In any event, proper management of sugar intolerance has ,educed hospital admissions and reduced hospital stay in infants requiring admission for infective enteritis.