الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Gastroenteritis in childhood/ especially in infancy continues to be an important problem both in developing and developed countries due to its serious acute and late complications. Persistent post-enteritis diarrhea and malnutrition are the most: important late complications of acute gastroenteritis. Sugar malabsorption is also one of the nutritional complications of gastroenteritis which is responsible for the persistance of the diarrhea in the majority of cases. Sugar malabsorption results from either disaccharide or monosaccharide malabsorption. The localisation of disaccharidase activity in the microvilli of the small intestinal epithelial cell renders them liable to be affected by any disorder that damages the small intestinal mucosa. Acute diarrheal disease usually of infectious origin is the most common cause world wide of secondary disaccharidase deficiency; especially lactasc enzyme deficiency. The reported frequency of this complication varied markedly from one study to another and from one place to another. Also only patients requiring hospitalization have been studied that may have introduced a selection bias such that only patients with the most sever diarrhea develop carbohydrate malabsorption. In addition, these earlier studies have provided little information regarding the prevalence of CHO malabsorption at the level of outpatient care where most children with diarrhea would normally be managed/ and included a relatively small number of patients which may have affected its prevalence. |