A hospital-based surveillance study conducted by Ciara O'Reilly of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA and colleagues describes the risk factors for death amongst children who have been hospitalized with diarrhea in rural Kenya.
Reporting in this week's PLoS Medicine, the authors found that infections with nontyphoidal Salmonella and with Shigella (but not with rotavirus) were associated with an increased risk of death.
The authors state that: "This study can help inform policy makers on priority areas for interventions to reduce childhood diarrhea requiring hospitalization or resulting in death, such as the use of zinc for diarrhea management, reemphasis on community level promotion of [oral rehydration solution], water, sanitation and hygiene interventions, and the development and roll-out of new enteric vaccines."
Funding: Funding for the study was provided by the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH). Additional support for the study was provided by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From July 2006, salary support for Dr. O'Reilly was provided by the US Agency for International Development through an Inter-Agency Agreement with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Citation: O'Reilly CE, Jaron P, Ochieng B, Nyaguara A, Tate JE, et al. (2012) Risk Factors for Death among Children Less than 5 Years Old Hospitalized with Diarrhea in Rural Western Kenya, 2005�: A Cohort Study. PLoS Med 9(7): e1001256. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001256
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PLoS Medicine