RESUMO
The study included 31 children (age 1 to 5 years) who were hospitalized for malnutrition, malnutrition with diarrhoea and acute diarrhoea of less than 48 hrs duration. The controls, consisted of 6 children from the same locality as patients, were apparently healthy and in the same age group. Serum chloride tend to increase in the patients and the increase was more pronounced in the group suffering from both malnutrition and diarrhoea. On the other hand, serum potassium tend to decrease and the decreases were significant in the groups having malnutrition. Serum aldosterone levels were raised in all the three groups of patients namely malnutrition, diarrhoea and malnutrition associated diarrhoea when compared with the control. The increase was still observed even after exclusion of the subjects whose ages lied within the first 1 year of the life for whom the serum aldosterone levels were found to have a sharp rise.