0000000000519159
AUTHOR
Ulrike Kullmer
Chronic Diarrhea in a 5-Year-Old Girl: Pitfall in Routine Laboratory Testing with Potentially Severe Consequences
A 5-year-old girl was referred because of recurrent watery diarrhea, abdominal pain, and flatulence. She was the second of 3 children. Her 10-year-old sister was normally developed and healthy. Her younger brother has meningomyelocele and hydrocephalus. At 1 year of age, the patient was admitted to the hospital for recurrent bronchitis, otitis media, food refusal, mild diarrhea, and abdominal distension since weaning. A sweat chloride analysis excluded cystic fibrosis. At that time, the patient’s laboratory results showed increased C-reactive protein (139 mg/L; reference interval, <5 mg/L) and moderate leukocytosis (14.6 × 109/L; reference interval, 4.5–13.5 × 109/L). Values for all other v…
Gut microbiota differs between children with Inflammatory Bowel Disease and healthy siblings in taxonomic and functional composition: a metagenomic analysis.
Current treatment for pediatric inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients is often ineffective, with serious side effects. Manipulating the gut microbiota via fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is an emerging treatment approach but remains controversial. We aimed to assess the composition of the fecal microbiome through a comparison of pediatric IBD patients to their healthy siblings, evaluating risks and prospects for FMT in this setting. A case-control (sibling) study was conducted analyzing fecal samples of six children with Crohn’s disease (CD), six children with ulcerative colitis (UC) and 12 healthy siblings by metagenomic sequencing. In addition, lifetime antibiotic intake was r…
High sustained virologic response rates in children with chronic hepatitis C receiving peginterferon alfa-2b plus ribavirin
Pegylated interferon (PEG-IFN) alfa-2b plus ribavirin (RBV) is the standard of care for adults with chronic hepatitis C but was not approved for the treatment of children at the time of this study. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of PEG-IFN alfa-2b plus RBV in children.Children and adolescents ages 3-17 years were treated with PEG-IFN alfa-2b (60microg/m(2)/week) plus RBV (15mg/kg/day). The duration of therapy was 24 weeks for genotype (G) 2 and G3 patients with low viral load (600,000IU/ml) and 48 weeks for G1, G4, and G3 with high viral load (or=600,000IU/ml). The primary end point was sustained virologic response (SVR), defined as undetectable hepatitis C vi…