Investigation of food acceptability and feeding practices for lipid nutrient supplements and blended flours used to treat moderate malnutrition.

Objective: To examine acceptability and feeding practices associated with different supplementary food items and identify practices associated with weight gain.

Methods: Caregivers (n = 409) whose children had been enrolled in a trial comparing a fortified corn-soy blended flour (CSB++), soy ready-to-use supplementary food (RUSF), and soy/whey RUSF answered a questionnaire administered by health workers in their homes.

Results: No significant differences in acceptability of food types were found.

Detection of low-concentration host mRNA transcripts in Malawian children at risk for environmental enteropathy.

Background And Objective: Transcriptomic analysis of fecal samples is an emerging method for the diagnosis of gastrointestinal pathology because it is noninvasive and requires minute volumes of analyte; however, detection of mRNA in low copy numbers in human stool is challenging. Our objective was to develop a method for detecting human mRNA suggestive of environmental enteropathy (EE) in feces.

Methods: Stool samples from 70 Malawian children, 34 without EE and 36 with EE, as defined by dual sugar absorption, were used to develop the methodology for mRNA detection.

Abnormal gut integrity is associated with reduced linear growth in rural Malawian children.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the relation of environmental enteropathy, as measured by the dual sugar absorption test, to linear growth faltering in 2- to 5-year-old Malawian children. Dietary quality, food insecurity, anthropometry, and site-specific sugar testing were measured in 418 children, and anthropometry was reassessed 3 months later. A linear regression model predicting linear growth was created.

The duration of diarrhea and fever is associated with growth faltering in rural Malawian children aged 6-18 months.

Nutrition support programs that only focus upon better complementary feeding remain an insufficient means of limiting growth faltering in vulnerable populations of children. To determine if symptoms of acute infections correlate with the incidence of growth faltering in rural Malawian children, the associations between fever, diarrhea, and cough with anthropometric measures of stunting, wasting, and underweight were investigated. Data were analyzed from a trial where 209 children were provided with adequate complementary food and followed fortnightly from 6-18 months of age.