Plasma free amino acids in normal children and in patients with proteinocaloric malnutrition: Fasting and infection

Abstract

This work attempts to perform a comparative study of plasma free amino acids in relation to nutritional situations. Children from 1-30 months of age were divided into five groups according to anamnestic, nutritional, clinical, and biologic data, as follows: group I, normal children; group II, normal children with extraen- teral infection and correct oral feeding; group III, normal children with acute nonsevere diarrhea, perfused, and receiving either insufficient or no feeding; groups IV and V, children in a state of moderate or severe malnutrition, respectively (Table 1). Results (Table 2) show that plasma amino acids are closely related to caloric and proteic feeding during the 2 or 3 days preceding blood samples, whatever the child’s nutritional state. Feeding characteristics must be taken into account when studying plasma aminogram in malnutrition states. Infection and clinical enteropathy do not, however, disturb plasma amino acid levels to a large extent. Discrimination (Table 4) shows that the taurine decrease is the more important index in recognizing proteinocaloric malnutrition regardless of type of feeding. Other amino acid disturbances in particular branched chain amino acids are too closely related to feeding during the days preceding blood sampling to permit recognition of malnutrition. The formula, valine + 0.68 lysine, appears in our study to be the best linear index of the severity of malnutrition. © 1978 International Pediatric Research Foundation, Inc.