Chronic non-specific diarrhea, transit time and fat supplementation

ABSTRACT

Among seventy patients under the age of five referred over a ten month period with diarrhea at booth hall children's hospital, were seventeen with characteristic features of chronic non-specific diarrhoea i.e. diarrhea for more than 3 weeks, with normal growth and without evidence of malabsorption, food intolerance or infection. Supplementation of meals with long chain triglyceride emulsion in a dose of 10 ml three times a day for three weeks markedly prolonged the whole gut and colonic transit times as measured by lactulose breath hydrogen test and carmine marker. Fat supplementation significantly reduced the average frequency of stool per day and markedly improved the consistency of stool per day and markedly improved the consistency of stool by the third week of treatment, after an initial time lag. No correlation was observed between the transit time and the frequency or the consistency. We conclude that fat supplementation improves the frequency and the consistency of stoll in chronic non-specific diarrhoea partly partly due to prolongation of colonic transit time