Management guidelines for acute infective diarrhoea / gastroenteritis in infants.

Background: Acute onset vomiting and diarrhoea is one of the most common illnesses of infancy, and is second only to respiratory illnesses as a cause of childhood deaths worldwide. Existing guidelines for management of diarrhoea are often ignored in public and private practice, possibly because of a perception that the guidelines are too simple, or because of expectations of the need to give 'real' drug therapy to stop diarrhoea.

Objectives: This guideline provides a problem-based approach to the basics of present-day management of acute gastroenteritis, and discusses the evidence for the recommendations.

Adjunctive corticosteroid treatment of clinical Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia in infants less than 18 months of age--a randomised controlled trial.

Objectives: To determine the efficacy and safety of adjunctive corticosteroid therapy in clinical Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia (PCP) in infants exposed to HIV infection.

Design: Double-blind randomised placebo-controlled trial.

Methods: Infants with a clinical diagnosis of PCP, based on an 'atypical' pneumonia with: (i) hypoxia out of proportion to the clinical findings on auscultation; (ii) C-reactive protein count less than 10 mg/1; (iii) lactate dehydrogenase level above 500 IU/1; (iv) compatible chest radiograph findings; and (v) positive HIV enzyme-linked immunosorbert assay (ELISA) were included in the study.