Hypoglycemia during Diarrhea in Childhood

Abstract

Abstract To determine the frequency and outcome of hypoglycemia during diarrhea in childhood, we screened 2003 consecutive patients less than 15 years of age who were admitted to a diarrhea treatment center in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Hypoglycemia, defined as a blood glucose concentration <2.2 mmol per liter, was found in 91 patients (4.5 percent), 39 (42.9 percent) of whom died. We also measured the plasma concentrations of glucoregulatory hormones and gluconeogenetic substrates in 46 of the patients with hypoglycemia who were 2 to 15 years old and in 25 normoglycemic patients matched with them for age and weight. The patients with hypoglycemia had had diarrhea for less time than the normoglycemic patients (median, 12 vs. 72 hours; P<0.05), and their last feeding had been 18 hours before admission, as compared with 9 hours for the normoglycemic patients (P<0.05). The groups were similar in terms of nutritional status, the proportion of patients who had fever, and the types of pathogens recovered from stool sam...