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Biomedical subjects

J Cravioto

Publications and source records attributed to J Cravioto.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

Pharmacokinetics of metronidazole in severely malnourished and nutritionally rehabilitated children.

A comparison of the pharmacokinetics of oral metronidazole, after a single dose of 30 mg/kg body weight, was done in two groups of subjects: group I consisted of 10 severely malnourished children, aged 4 to 43 months; group II consisted of 10 children, aged 3 to 25 months, who were studied after nutritional rehabilitation. The biologic half-life of elimination was significantly longer (p less than 0.01) in severely malnourished children (median, 10.21 hours; range, 4.89 to 22.93 hours) than in rehabilitated children (median, 5.09 hours; range, 2.61 to 8.75 hours). Metabolic clearance of metronidazole was significantly lower in group I (p less than 0.01; median, 0.077 L/kg/hr; range, 0.033 to 0.192 L/kg/hr) than in nutritionally rehabilitated children (median, 0.166 L/kg/hr; range, 0.105 to 0.300 L/kg/hr). Volume of distribution was not different between groups I and II, although both showed higher values than the values reported for children who were not malnourished. These findings suggest that the dose of metronidazole should be reduced in malnourished children, and the therapeutic regimen should be individualized for each patient.

Child Nutrition Disorders

The relationship of growth failure (chronic undernutrition) to the prevalence of clinically severe protein-energy malnutrition and to growth retardation in protein-energy malnutrition.

A total of 72 of 276 children from a rural Mexican village were chronically undernourished as judged by their growth failure between 6 and 36 months of age. Fourteen of the 72 and five of the remaining 204 children developed clinically severe protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) as judged by clinical signs other than weight or length. This amounted to an 8-fold higher prevalence of PEM in the group of children with growth failure. When children were grouped into quartiles of length at 6 months by sex, quartile was not related to the subsequent occurrence of PEM or to the age when PEM developed. However, analysis indicated that the growth of children with PEM and growth failure had slowed relative to their quartiles before PEM developed; they were also retarded according to the Harvard standards. The children with PEM were then compared to others with a similar growth history (growth failure, no growth failure) who never developed PEM. PEM children did not differ significantly in over weight or length and displayed a significant difference in upper arm muscle circumference at only one age. The 14 with growth failure and PEM had poorer overall growth, including arm muscle circumference, than the five with PEM and no growth failure.

Anthropometry

Abnormal auditory evoked potentials in early infancy malnutrition.

Computer-averaged auditory evoked potentials were found to be abnormal in infants hospitalized because of severe malnutrition (marasmus). They improved as the infants' somatic growth improved during the course of treatment, but were still deviant at the time of discharge from the hospital and at subsequent outpatient follow-up. Abnormalities in evoked potentials may reflect a long-lasting effect of malnutrition on brain function.

Auditory Cortex

Morbidity and growth of infants and young children in a rural Mexican village.

The relationship between childhood illnesses and growth increments in length and weight was investigated in a 13-month birth cohort of rural Mexican children. Increments in length and weight for each year from birth to three years were related to high and low frequencies of reported time ill during the same period. Seventy-two of the 276 children had already been characterized as exhibiting "growth failure" relative to other members of the cohorts, and this was considered as a separate factor in the study. We found that upper and lower respiratory infection did not affect incremental gain in height or weight. A high frequency of diarrheal infection was found to reduce weight gain, although gain in height was not affected. Relative to the total sample, the average child with a high frequency of diarrhea achieved only 95 per cent of expected body weight age three; a chidl with both growth failure and high diarrheal frequency reached only 90 per cent of expected body weight at age three.

Body Height

[Genetic influence on energy requirements. I. Development of an experimental model].

In attempting to explore the mechanisms of interaction of genetic and environmental factors that affect the quantitative requirements of energy by man, the convenience of an animal model was considered and searched for. The idea was to start with male and female Wistar rats and through inbreeding segregate the highly effective users of energy from the poor users. The efficiency of dietary energy utilization was measured by the index of conversion (IC) defined as the dietary intake necessary to increase 1 g of body weight in a 32-day period, from day 21st to day 52nd of extrauterine life. The median value of the IC for all animals included in each experiment was the cut-off point to classify each individual as a good or a poor energy user. The first generation had three males and five females with a median IC = 2.90 and a range from 2.54 to 3.25. The proportion of males below the median was 3/3 while the proportion of females was 2/5. The difference in proportions was striking and led immediately to the consideration of a sex-link hypothesis, and to test it the, IC of 91 Wistar rats randomly selected at birth was obtained. The median value of the series was 2.99 with a range from 2.24 to 3.95. The proportion of male rats with values below the median was 33/38 while the corresponding proportion for females rats was 13/53. In other words, while nine of every ten male animals were good users of energy, only two out of ten females fell into this category.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Animals

Effects of chronic toluene inhalation on avoidance conditioned behavior in rats.

Thirty-two Wistar albino rats were distributed at random in a factorial design 2 x 2, with two age groups (20 and 90 days old), and two treatments (chronically exposed to toluene vapors 30,000-40,000 ppm in air/15 minutes per day for 30 days, and controls with only air). Twenty-four hours after the last exposure, the rats were tested for conditioned behavior in a "T" maze of avoidance electric shock. Latency of initial response to escape (LIRE) and latency of escape (LE) were measured in seconds. Adult rats both exposed to chronic toluene inhalation and non-exposed showed higher values of LIRE and LE with respect young rats. Animals exposed to chronic toluene inhalation also presented higher values of latency in both LIRE and LE when compared to non-exposed to toluene (controls) of the same age. The differences were evaluated by Friedman's test. The findings are suggestive of brain dysfunction associated with chronic toluene inhalation, and may represent a delay to respond to a displeasure stimulus probably due to defect of internal mechanisms of facilitation-inhibition of neural impulses, mediated by neurotransmitters.

Animals