BACKGROUND AND AIM Nutrition is an essential component in human growth, development and maintenance of healthy life. Tribal communities are highly disease prone and do not have the required access to basic health facilities, also having a high degree of malnutrition. The aim of this study was to determine the association of body mass index with dental caries among malnourished tribal children o...

1. Enzymes pertinent to bactericidal activities of leucocytes were assayed in children suffering from protein-calorie malnutrition. 2. Leucocytes obtained from malnourished and control children contained similar activities for glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase and 6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase. Granule-bound NADPH oxidase activity was low in leucocytes isolated from malnourished patients and...

This study shows that malnourished children have impaired candidacidal activity of leucocytes, a finding which runs parallel to the higher rates of isolation of Candida sp. from throat secretions. In well nournished subjects the mean candidacidal ability was 44.5% in the moderately undernourished group it was 17.6%, and in the severely malnourished group it was 13.7%. This impaired candidacidal...

Antibodies to several food proteins were detected in the serum of 13 out of 20 malnourished children. Antibody activity was found mainly in the IgG and IgA classes. On ingestion of food items to which antibodies were demonstrated, no untoward symptom occurred nor was complement activation observed in vivo. It is suggested that food antibodies in malnourished children result from atrophied gut m...