Relation between weaning and gastroenteritis

ABSTRACT

Acute infantile diarrhea is the leading cause of death among Egyptian children, accounting for more than 50 percent of the death in children under 2 years of age [NCDDP, 1988]. In Egypt, most health experts agree that the best time to introduce foods is at four to six months of age. This is the time when breast milk starts to become inadequate to meet all the infant's nutritional needs [Aref et al., 1984] and the rest of the nutritional requirements become obtained through supplementary foods [Millard, 1985]. In this study, we aim to evaluate the relationship between the weaning period and the possible incidence of diarrheal attacks and to spot light on some parameters namely stool examination for different parasites, culture of the specimen and methylene blue preparations to detect faecal leucocytes. Hematocrit value, Hb percent, R.B.Cs and W.L.Cs and differential leucocytic count then estimation of band/total neutrophil ratio. Serum albumin and serum Na+. 60 cases presented with diarrhea after early introduction of foods during the weaning period, aged from 6 - 24 months were taken in addition to one hundred normal children as a control. The results of this work shows that infants below one year of age were the more affected with attacks of diarrhea. Artificial feeding prior to the period of weaning was more affected than breast feeding. Hb, red cell count and serum albumin were decreased. Hematocrit value was low or normal. Isonatremic dehydration is the most common type of dehydration [75 percent]. As regards the causative organisms, E. Coli [28.30 percent] was the most common followed by E. histolytica [21.6 percent] and giardia lamblia [16 percent]. In this work, the presence of polymorph nuclear leucocytes in the stool was found to be a predictive test for bacterial etiology of diarrhea with positive predictive value of 87 percent. The band/neutrophil ratio of bacterial group had a highly significant difference when compared to the control group, but the parasitic diarrheal group had non-significant statistical difference when compared to the control group