You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Recent advances in clinical science
Management of infectious diarrhoea
  1. A C Casburn-Jones1,
  2. M J G Farthing2
  1. 1Department of Gastroenterology, University College Hospital, London, UK
  2. 2St George’s Hospital Medical School, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to:
    Professor M J G Farthing
    St George’s Hospital Medical School, Cranmer Terrace, London SW17 0RE, UK; m.farthingsghms.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/gut.2003.022103

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Infectious diarrhoea is the most common cause of diarrhoea worldwide and is the leading cause of death in childhood. Gastrointestinal infections have their major impact in the developing world. In the developed world, despite improvements in public health and economic wealth, the incidence of intestinal infection remains high and continues to be an important clinical problem.

    During the past 10 years there have been some major improvements in our knowledge base regarding the treatment of infectious diarrhoea. Oral rehydration therapy (ORT) remains central to case management but advances have been made by the introduction of hypotonic solutions and there is early evidence that resistant starch may be the substrate of the future. The search for antisecretory drugs continues, with real progress having been made by the introduction of a new class of drugs, the enkephalinase inhibitors. Other new drugs are in the early phases of development. The role of antimicrobial agents in the management of infective diarrhoea continues to be clarified with the emergence of new agents and simplified treatment regimens. Probiotics are popular with diarrhoea sufferers and have been shown to have some efficacy but further scrutiny is required to determine the magnitude of their effects.

    INTRODUCTION

    Infectious diarrhoea is the most common cause of diarrhoea worldwide and is responsible for more deaths than gastrointestinal cancers, peptic ulcer, or inflammatory bowel disease. Diarrhoeal disease is the leading cause of childhood death and the second most common cause of death worldwide.

    Gastrointestinal infections have their major impact in the developing world: diarrhoeal diseases are responsible, directly or indirectly, for approximately three million deaths each year among children under five years of age—that is, 1 every 10 seconds. There are an estimated 1.8 billion episodes of childhood diarrhoea per year and virtually all of these acute diarrhoeal episodes are related to infectious …

    View Full Text