Acute diarrhoea remains a major public health challenge in developing countries. We examined the role of a probiotic in the prevention of acute diarrhoea to discover if there was an effect directed towards a specific aetiology. A double-blind, randomized, controlled field trial involving 3758 children aged 1-5 years was conducted in an urban slum community in Kolkata, India. Participants were g...

Epidemic surveillance is an effective means to determine the characteristics of acute diarrhea and the benefits of disease control and prevention. The epidemiological, clinical and etiological data of adult acute diarrhea in Shanghai were collected and analyzed. Of the 2,430 acute diarrhea patients, the 162 subjects that were sampled (sample ratio: 16:1) had an average age of 44  18; 142 (87.7...

The study was carried out to determine the prevalence and pattern of antimicrobial resistance of Shigella species among patients with acute diarrhoea in Karaj, Tehran, Iran. The study included all acute diarrhoea patients who visited the hospitals and treatment centres of Karaj during November 2001-October 2002. Of 734 stool samples collected from patients with acute diarrhoea and analyzed for ...

The current concepts in persistent diarrhoea (PD) are reviewed. 102 patients with acute diarrhoea and 85 with PD are studied. All were less than one year old. Information about age, nutritional status, time of breast feeding, previous episodes of acute and persistent diarrhoea and the previous use of drugs is registered. Microbiological and parasitologics studies were done to identify enteric p...

Background. Although diosmectite has demonstrated efficacy in the treatment of acute watery diarrhoea in children, its efficacy in adults still needs to be assessed. The objective of this study was therefore to assess the efficacy of diosmectite on the time to recovery in adults with acute diarrhoea. Methods. A total of 346 adults with at least three watery stools per day over a period of less ...

A protocol of nutritional rehabilitation using fermented milk, vegetable oil, and castor sugar has been tested on 54 Senegalese children age 6-36 months admitted with acute diarrhoea and malnutrition. At time of admission, 39 per cent of children were dehydrated and 26 per cent had sugar intolerance. In the course of treatment three absconded and one died from acute pneumonia with respiratory a...

Diarrhoea is a universal human experience. It is both a symptom and a sign. On symptoms it is defined as abnormal passage of three or more loose or liquid stools per day. As a sign, diarrhoea is an increase in stool weight (or volume) of more than 200 grams (or mL) per 24 hours on a Western diet. Previous studies have suggested that stool weight is higher in Indians, and the upper limit of norm...

This paper examines the seasonal variation in the reported incidence of acute diarrhoea for selected areas in the northeast of Thailand. Charts are presented which show rainfall, temperature and reported incidence of acute diarrhoea for the period 1982 to 1987. Incidence of diarrhoea appears to be inversely related to a sharp decrease in temperature around January each year. Although rainfall d...

Aeromonas hydrophila is pathogen for several vertebrates. The bacteriological, clinical and epidemiological evidences for the role of A. hydrophila have been described in human infections. The presence of this pathogen in contaminated water is well-established and ingestion of such water may cause infection. There are many reports of acute diarrhoea associated with A. hydrophila transmitted by ...

Persea americana is a plant used by traditional medicine practitioners to treat ailments including diarrhoea and diabetes mellitus in Nigeria. Hence, the chloroform and the methanol fractions of the chloroform-methanol extract of the leaves of P. americana were evaluated for their acute toxicity as well as anti-diarrhoeal effects in Wistar rats to substantiate this claim. The chloroform and met...