Changes in nutritional status in children with community-acquired pneumonia: new opportunities for diagnosis and correction

A change in the nutritional status both towards a lack of mass and towards an excess is a factor in the unfavorable course and outcomes of acute infectious diseases. Protein-energy deficiency affects the immune response, altering the body's defense processes. Several studies have shown that the relationship between infection and malnutrition is bi-directional. Obesity also impairs the immune response. An important aspect of the development of nutritional status disorders in patients with acute infectious diseases is the combined lesion of the respiratory and gastrointestinal tract organs. We carried out a study of body composition by bioimpedansometry in 12 children in the febrile period of acute respiratory infection of bacterial etiology (hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia), as well as in 16 clinically healthy children from 4 to 11 years old. Body fat mass, active cell mass and child's weight were assessed. In conventionally healthy children, ACM and иody fat mass corresponded to the norm. In children with pneumonia, upon admission to the hospital, a decrease in active cell mass was observed in more than 80% of cases, active cell mass by the time of discharge was normal in half of the examined patients. Clinical examples of changes in the nutritional status established on the basis of bioimpedansomerism in children hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia are described. Thus, for the first time, we conducted a pilot study of body composition in children with acute respiratory diseases of bacterial etiology, which demonstrated the greatest severity of changes in protein metabolism. On the basis of this, a correction of protein deficiency has been proposed by adding a dry product of preventive dietary food for children 1-10 years old to the children's diet.

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