Racecadotril in the treatment of acute watery diarrhea in children.

Background: Racecadotril (acetorphan), an enkephalinase inhibitor with antisecretory and antidiarrheal actions, is an effective and safe treatment for acute diarrhea in adults and children. Whether treatment with racecadotril and oral rehydration therapy is more effective than treatment with oral rehydration alone in hospitalized children with acute watery diarrhea is not known.

Methods: We treated 135 boys 3 to 35 months of age who had watery diarrhea of five days' duration or less with racecadotril (1.

[The development of a clinical scale for the diagnosis of cholera in infants with acute watery diarrhea].

The diagnosis of cholera in infants based on clinical grounds is often difficult because other enteropathogens such as rotavirus or enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) can produced a very similar clinical picture. We studied 147 infants admitted consecutively to the Rehydration Unit of Cayetano Heredia Hospital in Lima, Perú, trying to identified those characteristics significantly associated with the isolation of Vibrio cholerae 01 on the admission stool culture. After a univariate comparison of cases and controls were selected those characteristics that showed a significantly different distribution.