CEJ 1

Garrett Kitchen

January 31st, 2013

Malnourished Gain Lifesaver in Antibiotics

Malawi, Africa

Grady,Denise
The New York Times.com
January 30, 2013
Science
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/health/antibiotics-can-save-lives-of-severely-malnourished-children-studies-find.html?ref=science
    Antibiotics were given to kids for a week along with a peanut butter mixture with sugar, oil, milk powder, and micronutrients in a test to see how this affected 2,767 malnourished children ranging from six months to five years old (Denise Grady, nytimes.com). Also the research was on how kwashiorkor, an extreme form of malnutrition could be partially caused by a bacterial imbalance in the gut (Denise Grady, nytimes.com). A good contributor to helping fight that kwashiorkor was the enriched peanut butter. But  “for the improvement to last, it may be necessary to continue the feeding for longer than the few months that is now customary. Eventually, he said, it may be possible to help children with kwashiorkor by giving them the bacteria they lack, but such treatments have not been developed yet.” (Dr. Jeffrey I. Gordon) The test results of treating the 2,767 children were: 8.51% of the children taking a placebo recovered, of the children taking amoxicillin (antibiotic) 88.7% survived, and taking cefdinir (antibiotic) 90.9%. Additionally all the children were given the peanut butter, and the ones taking antibiotics gained weight quicker. If the peanut butter was given to the children for a week, there was notable increase in health, but as soon as that treatment was withheld from the body the became malnourished again.
    This research means that a fairly cheap antibiotic donated by governments and people can help cure the a part of the malnourished children of people on our planet. I think it is very good that this research is being conducted, and It will be interesting to see if the research actually has outcomes on the people of Malawi or anywhere. I feel worried about the fact that some children died in these tests, although overall it will have more positive effects than negative. The article had no bias whatsoever, it suck to being strictly informational. I wonder if they give out the antibiotics to malnourished people, will they use the one that had a few percent less effectiveness, because it may be cheaper?