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Non Invasive Assessment of Small Intestinal Health in Aboriginal Children with and without Diarrhoeal Disease – Small Intestine Villous Function Breath Test
Author(s) -
Butler Ross N,
Ritchie Brett,
Brewster David,
McNeil Yvette,
Tran Cuong D,
Davidson Geoffrey P
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.21.5.a675
Subject(s) - diarrhoeal disease , medicine , intestinal permeability , enteropathy , lactulose , gastroenterology , small intestine , disease , diarrhea
Small intestinal enteropathy is endemic in Indigenous Australian children and in children in the developing world. The aim of this study was to assess the enteropathy using the newly developed small intestine villous function breath test as a non‐invasive tool in Aboriginal children with and without diarrhoea. The breath test measures the level of brush border sucrase activity of enterocytes lining the small bowel. Results are expressed as a cumulative percentage of administered dose recovered at 90 minutes (cPDR90). We report the use of the breath test in a comparative study of 36 Aboriginal children admitted to hospital (18 with acute diarrhoeal illness and 18 with non diarrhoeal disease) with 7 healthy Non‐Aboriginal control cases. Lactulose/rhamnose permeability on a timed 90 minute blood test was also performed in all hospitalised children. Those with diarrhoeal disease had a significantly decreased absorptive capacity (p<0.0001) as determined by the breath test with a mean cPDR90 of 1.9% compared to either Aboriginal (4.1%) or non Aboriginal (6.1%) age matched controls. There was a significant correlation (p<0.05) between the SBT and intestinal permeability. This breath test provides a novel and simple integrated measure of the absorptive capacity of the small intestine.