Malnutrition 'damages gut bacteria'

Child malnutrition could have a long-term effect on the gut, which can affect the patient long after treatment, according to a new study.

The research, published in the Nature journal, studied malnourished children in Bangladesh and their gut health. It found that the bacterial make-up was not fully restored to normal, even after food supplements were given.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), severe acute malnutrition affects around 20 million children across the world. In Bangladesh alone, more than 40 per cent of children under five are affected by stunted growth.

The research, according to the team, could help to explain why children that have been underfed in their early years, fail to grow normally even after treatment. Malnutrition in children can lead to problems that affect the patient long after childhood, such as cognitive problems and vulnerable immune systems.

Microbes in the gut are necessary for extracting and using nutrients from food, and it was suggested that malnutrition damages this process.

In the study, teams from Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Dhaka, assessed 64 malnourished children between the ages of six and 20 months.

The extremely underfed children were given either Plumpy'Nut, which is an enriched peanut-based food that is the most common treatment for malnutrition globally, or Khichuri-Halwa, which is produced in Bangladesh and is primarily made from rice and lentils.

They then studied faecal samples from all 64 children before they were given any treatment and every three days while they were being fed Plumpy'Nut or Khichuri-Halwa throughout their treatment period, which usually lasts around two weeks. The doses of enriched foods were stopped when each child reached a certain weight.

Samples were then taken every month for four months and compared to that of 50 healthy children of the same age, where the gut developed normally. However, the study found that this was not the case in the malnourished children as, although they were able to gain weight, there was only a temporary improvement in the make-up of the gut.  

When treatment was stopped, the organ returned to an "immature" state.

Professor Colin Hill of University College Cork, Ireland, told the BBC: "The findings are novel, unexpected and compelling, and show that purely nutritionally based interventions do not fully restore a mature gut microbiota in these children."