Definitions Chronic diarrhea is a common complaint in pediatric medicine and can pose a complex situation for practitioners and families. This complaint is both a symptom and a sign. (1) Although patients or their parents often assess the presence of diarrhea by reporting stool consistency and frequency, one can more scientifically define diarrhea as stool volume >10 g/kg per day in infants and...

Copyright © 2014 Massachusetts Medical Society. I n the United States, approximately 179 million cases of acute diarrhea occur each year, amounting to 0.6 bouts per person per year. In one study, the estimated prevalence of diarrhea among adults the month before questioning was 3 to 7%, with the rate dependent on age, and 8% among children 5 years of age or younger.1 A similar rate of acute dia...

Traveler's diarrhea is the most common health problem of international travelers. We determined the prevalence of Aeromonas spp. associated with traveler's diarrhea and analyzed the geographic distribution, clinical features, and antimicrobial susceptibility. Aeromonas spp. were isolated as a cause of traveler's diarrhea in 18 (2%) of 863 patients. A. veronii biotype sobria was isolated in nine...

Escherichia coli is the predominant nonpathogenic facultative flora of the human intestine. Some E. coli strains, however, have developed the ability to cause disease of the gastrointestinal, urinary, or central nervous system in even the most robust human hosts. Diarrheagenic strains of E. coli can be divided into at least six different categories with corresponding distinct pathogenic schemes...

Background: Cryptosporidium has emerged as an important cause of diarrheal illness worldwide, especially among young children and patients with immune deficiencies. The spectrum of intestinal infection ranges from asymptomatic carrier state to severe diarrhea, depending upon the nutritional and immune status of the host. Materials & Methods: 387children, in the age group from 1 month to 10 year...

Tropical sprue (TS), although endemic in certain tropical regions of the world, is rarely seen in North America and Europe. However, in this era of globalization and worldwide travel, it is important for all clinicians to be aware of the possibility of TS in patients presenting with nonspecific, persistent gastrointestinal complaints like diarrhea and weight loss. The symptoms and histologic fi...

McKittrick-Wheelock syndrome is a rare disease characterized by a large hypersecretory rectosigmoid villous adenoma resulting in persistent large volume diarrhea, electrolyte abnormalities, and renal dysfunction. We report an unusual presentation of this syndrome in a patient who developed persistent diarrhea along with dermatomyositis and rectal prolapse and was later discovered to have a larg...

Cryptosporidium spp. is under recognized as an important pathogen causing diarrhea in children and HIV-infected individuals with associated high morbidity and mortality. In endemic areas, most symptomatic infections are in childhood and in immunocompromised adults. The immune status of the host plays a critical role in determining the severity of cryptosporidiosis. Infection is self-limited in ...

Diarrheal diseases due to infection constitute a major burden of disease. Dehydration resulting from diarrhea can be fatal. It is the cause of approximately 1.8 million deaths every year. The vast majority of these deaths are of children under five years of age living in lowand middleincome countries. Interventions to prevent diarrhea include provision of safe water, hand washing, the use of sa...

To determine risk factors for diarrhea, the authors followed an open cohort of 1,314 children from Guinea-Bissau by weekly diarrhea recall interviews between April 1987 and March 1990. Data on feeding practices and measles infection were available for all children and, for 531 children, comprehensive data on explanatory variables were recorded. Of 57 variables, seven were independently associat...