BACKGROUND Pulmonary tuberculosis contributes to increased morbidity and mortality in severely malnourished children in endemic settings. Despite high clinical suspicion, few tuberculosis prevalence estimates exist in malnourished African children. Diagnostics such as Xpert MTB/RIF may help to determine pulmonary tuberculosis prevalence, however its performance in severely malnourished childre...

OBJECTIVE The World Health Organization recommends discharging children admitted to nutrition programs treating severe acute malnutrition, with a low mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC <115 mm) when weight gain is >15%. When this recommendation is followed, the most severely malnourished children receive a shorter treatment compared to children that are less severely malnourished. This study ass...

The frequencies of chromosomal aberrations in Giemsa-bar:ded preparations obtained from peripheral blood cultures of 5 kwashiorkor, 3 marasmic and 2 marasmickwashiorkor patients were investigated. Analysis of 1120 metaphases from these patients revealed an aberration rate of 5. 80 per cent as against a frequency of 1. 66 per cent seen in control children. However, no particular chromosome or ch...

The serum Zinc, Alkaline phosphatase activity and Albumin levels of 50 protein energy malnourished children (6 months – 5 years) were compared with those of 50 normal chil-dren. The levels of zinc was found to be significantly low in malnourished groups and tended to vary with the degree of malnutrition as compared to the control group (p<0.001). These levels were lower in children who had skin...

Hypocalcaemia is common in severely-malnourished children and is often associated with fatal outcome. There is very limited information on the clinical predicting factors of hypocalcaemia in hospitalized severely-malnourished under-five children. Our objective was to evaluate the prevalence, clinical predicting factors, and outcome of hypocalcaemia in such children. In this case-control study, ...

A hospital-based case control study was carried out to determine the pattern of infections and immunoblobulin levels in Sudanese children with severe protein energy malnutrition (PEM). The pre-dietary rehabilitation levels of the three major immunoglobulins (IgG, IgA and IgM) were compared with those of normal controls, and with the levels after dietary rehabilitation. Eighty one children were ...

Background: Anthropometric surveys of children are used to assess the nutritional status of a population. World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that either mid-upper-arm circumference (MUAC) or weight-for-height Z-scores (WHZ) are used to assess acute malnutrition prevalence. However, there are reports from several countries that the two criteria identify different children. In order to ex...

The sweat test was performed by the method of Gibson and Cooke on 36 children with second and third degree malnutrition, aged from 2 months to 4 years. The results were compared with those from 32 healthy, well nourished controls in the same age range. Determinations were made of sodium and chloride concentrations, chloride/sodium ratio, and the sum of the concentrations of the two electrolytes...

The association between breastfeeding, nutritional status and survival was investigated in a cohort of 1087 children aged 12-35 months from rural Bangladesh followed monthly during 2 years. Mean weight-for-age (%NCHS) of breastfed children was 69.6 per cent (s.d.: 9.3 per cent) compared to 70.6 per cent (s.d.: 10.7 per cent) (P less than 0.001) for non-breast fed children. This confirms that af...

BACKGROUND Infections are common complications occurring in malnourished childrenas a result of impaired immunity. Urinary tract infections (UTI) have been found to be the commonest cause of fever in normal children in developing countries. However, data regarding UTI among malnourished children is limited because in most of time severe and moderately malnourished children are afebrile despite ...