Maternal knowldge and practices in feeding infants and young children during diarrhea in Assiut University Hospital

An exploratory-descriptive design was conducted on 300 mothers and their infants or children under years of age with diarrhea who where coming to the Rehydration Unit and Outpatient Clinic at Assiut University Hospital to identify their knowledge and practices related to feeding their infants and young children during diarrhea. Data were collected during the period from September 2000 until February 2001. A structured interview sheet was designed specifically to collect data. The study recommended a nutritional education program for mothers and importance of continued breast-feeding and reydration during diarrhea and improving educational level of mothers

Detection of colonisation factor antigen as a rapid screening test for enteropathogenic escherichia coli causing infantile diarrhea

In this study 75 E-coli pools isolated from 120 rectal swab taken from infants suffering from watery diarrhea were studied together with 18 E-coli pools isolated from healthy controls of the same age group. All these E-coli pools were tested for enteropathogenic serotypes, enterotoxigenicity, invasion,presence of colonisation factor antigen and colicine production. Comparing E-coli pools isolated from diarrheal - cases and controls; the incidence of colicinogenic E-coli pools were equally distributed in patients and control groups. The incidence of enterotoxigenic and of enteropathogenic serotypable E coli pools in diarrheal cases were about twice their incidence in the control group. The incidence of colonisation factor antigen in diarrheal E-coli pools was about seven times that in control group. The most commonly associated characters, were toxin production and colonisation factor antigen being three times as much as that in the control group [17.3%, 5.6%] respectively, this shows the importance of detection of colonisation factor antigen by mannose resistant haemagglutination of adult chicken red cells as a simple easily performed screening test for detection of enteropathogenic E-coli in infantile diarrheal cases