Assessment of Chronic Diarrhea in Early Infancy in Tehran Tertiary Care Center; Tehran-Iran

Introduction Chronic diarrhea of infancy is a heterogeneous syndrome that includes several diseases with different etiologies. The aim of this study was to investigate chronic diarrhea, its etiologies, clinical features and outcomes in infancy. Materials and Methods Retrospective study investigating infants hospitalized in the Gastroenterology Department of Tehran Tertiary Care Center.The main demographic data, etiology, characteristics of diarrhea, and outcome were evaluated. Data were analyzed by SPSS software, version 16. Results In this study, 63.9% of cases were female and 36.1% were male. 24 cases (66.7%) had osmotic diarrhea and 11 (30.6%) had secretory diarrhea. In this study there was no significant statistical correlation between type of diarrhea and sex, gestational age, severity of dehydration, birth weight and nutrition. The majority of patients with osmotic (58.3%) and secretory diarrhea (63.6%), had weight percentile below 3%, which showed a significant statistical difference (P < 0.03). Etiologies found in newborns included: food allergy (41.7%), glucose/ galactose malabsorption (19.4%), post gastroenteritis malabsorption (11.1%), sepsis (8.3%), autoimmune enteropathy (5.6%), galactosemia (2.8%), pseudo membranous colitis (2.8%), cystic fibrosis (2.8%), intestinal malrotation (2.8%), congenital chloride diarrhea (2.8%). Atotal of 4 out of 36 patients (%11.1) had early onset of diarrhea. Intestinal biopsy was done in 7(20%) cases. Conclusion Chronic diarrhea in infancy has different etiologies and outcomes. According to high prevalence of allergy in this study, more attention needs to be paid to this issue. On the other side, food allergy was more common in nonexclusive breast fed infants, which shows breast feeding has a protective effect against neonatal diarrhea.