Hunger is one of the many consequences of neglect. This study demonstrates the long-term health impact that hunger can have.
Nutrition therapy has saved the lives of millions of malnourished infants, but may not restore an imbalance in gut bacteria that is key to long-term health and vitality, researchers said Wednesday.
In a paper in the journal Nature, the team identified a hitherto invisible and possibly long-lasting complication of severe hunger.
And they said it may help explain why childrenin poor or war-struck countries often fail to grow fully and remain sickly after being nursed back to health with special, high-calorie survival foods.
"Therapeutic food interventions have reduced mortality in children with severe acute malnutrition, but incomplete restoration of healthy growth remains a major problem," wrote the study authors from the United States and Bangladesh.
The team studied the gut microbes of healthy children in the Mirpur slum of Dhaka in Bangladesh, and compared them with a group who had been treated for severe acute malnutrition (SAM).
These children had been nursed back to health on either a peanut-based paste or a local, rice-and-lentil-based therapeutic food.
Their gut microbes, mainly bacteria that help digest food and produce certain vitamins, was tested before, during and after treatment.
"Children who where undernourished had a microbial community that was immature, it... was not appropriate for their chronological age," said study co-author Jeffrey Gordon of the Centre for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at Washington University in St Louis.
"So these children are walking around with a developmental defect involving microbial cells that form an organ, a microbial organ."
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-06-severe-hunger-effects-gut-health.html
Comments (0)