This article summarizes thirty years of intensive clinical metabolic and therapeutic studies of the consequences of severe protein deficiency relative to calories, which results in kwashiorkor, and of a balanced deficiency of protein and calories that results in marasmus. Evidence is provided that these are two different metabolic diseases, but kwashiorkor is usually superimposed on some degree...

BACKGROUND It has been hypothesized that one factor associated with poor prognosis in kwashiorkor, but not in marasmus, is impaired lipid catabolism, which limits the supply of energy that is essential for survival when dietary intake is inadequate. However, this hypothesis has not been tested. OBJECTIVE The objective was to measure lipid kinetics in malnourished children with kwashiorkor or ...

This report describes an 11-month old girl with Hartnup disease presenting with kwashiorkor and acrodermatitis enteropathica-like skin lesions but free of other clinical findings. This case with kwashiorkor had acrodermatitis enteropathica-like desquamative skin eruption. Since zinc level was in the normal range, investigation for a metabolic disorder was considered, and Hartnup disease was dia...

BACKGROUND Mortality in children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) remains high despite standardized rehabilitation protocols. Two forms of SAM are classically distinguished: kwashiorkor and marasmus. Children with kwashiorkor have nutritional edema and metabolic disturbances, including hypoalbuminemia and hepatic steatosis, whereas marasmus is characterized by severe wasting. The metabolic ...

1. Utilizing the bromodeoxyuridine differential-chromatid labelling technique the in vitro proliferation of lymphocytes from children with kwashiorkor was followed in phytohaemagglutinin-stimulated cultures and compared with controls. 2. Analyses of first, second and third or subsequent division cells as a function of culture time between 40 and 96 h showed that cell-cycle duration was prolonge...

The skeletal spectre of the marasmic child clearly results from a lack of intake of the bulk nutrients. It can be easily and consistently reproduced in any convenient species of experimental animal. In stark contrast, the other major form of malnutrition, kwashiorkor, has only once been convincingly reproduced in experimental animals. Coward & Whitehead (1972) produced oedema, fatty liver, skin...

Growth failure is a common presentation of patients with pancreatic insufficient cystic fibrosis. However, full blown kwashiorkor is extremely rare. Cystic fibrosis is also considered to be rare in the South Asian population. This report describes a Sri Lankan infant with cystic fibrosis who presented with clinical features of severe kwashiorkor.

The nitro blue tetrazolium test was applied on neutrophils from children with kwashiorkor and from control children. The percentage of formazan cells formed in the kwashiorkor patients was significantly less than in the control group in spite of the presence of associated infections in the former. A direct correlation exists between the percentage of formazan cell formation and total serum prot...

The background to social and emotional deprivation is discussed and applied to a study of kwashiorkor in East African children. A group of 107 children with kwashiorkor was compared with 111 controls. Age, sex and tribe were all found to have significances of their own: fifty of each group were therefore matched for these three factors. Ten other factors were found to be significant in the bac...