NEMIA is an important manifestation of Kwashiorkor,15 a syndrome of protein malnutrition. Woodruff,5 on the basis of his studies in Africa, emphasized the difficulty of assessing the role of protein malnutrition per se in the genesis of anemia in Kwashiorkor, since the human syndrome was associated with multiple nutritional deficiencies and often complicated by intercurrent infections and paras...

Somatomedin activity was assayed in the plasma of children suffering from protein calorie malnutrition by a bioassay using rat cartilage and expressed as sulphate uptake ratio. The sulphate uptake ratio was particularly reduced in kwashiorkor. In marasmus there was a slight reduction and the levels were still in the normal range. Plasma growth hormone (GH) levels were raised in kwashiorkor but ...

Children with kwashiorkor showed a high incidence of deranged cellular immunity as evidenced by impairment of delayed cutaneous hypersensitivity reactions to candida and diphtheria toxoid antigens and of lymphocyte transformation after phytohaemagglutinin stimulation. This may contribute to their susceptibility to infection. A correlation was shown between the degree of impairment of tests of c...

Oedematous malnutrition, represented by its most severe form kwashiorkor, is rampant in many parts of the world and is associated with a high case fatality rate. Despite being first described more than a century ago, the pathogenesis of kwashiorkor is still not clear. The traditional thinking is that it results from a deficiency of dietary protein and is usually associated with an infection. Th...