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Biomedical subjects

G Hussaini

Publications and source records attributed to G Hussaini.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1983

Increased mortality in children with mild vitamin A deficiency.

An average of 3481 preschool-age rural Indonesian children were re-examined every 3 months for 18 months. The mortality rate among children with mild xerophthalmia (night blindness and/or Bitot's spots) was on average 4 times the rate, and in some age groups 8 to 12 times the rate, among children without xerophthalmia. Mortality increased, almost linearly, with the severity of mild xerophthalmia (night blindness, Bitot's spots, and the two combined). These relations persisted after stratification for respiratory disease, wasting, gastroenteritis, pedal oedema, and childhood exanthems. Mild vitamin A deficiency was directly associated with at least 16% of all deaths in children aged from 1 to 6 years. These results suggest that mild xerophthalmia justifies vigorous community-wide intervention, as much to reduce childhood mortality as to prevent blindness, and that night blindness and Bitot's spots are as important as anthropometric indices in screening children to determine which of them need medical and nutritional attention.

Anthropometry↗
PubMed1983

Interactions of community nutritional status and xerophthalmia in Indonesia.

In order to determine which community level factors best explain the variation in the prevalence of xerophthalmia, an analysis was done on risk factors of xerophthalmia from the Indonesian Nutritional Blindness Study (1976 to 1979). Because of the common belief that xerophthalmia is closely linked to malnutrition, and the fact that within the study itself, it was demonstrated that children with xerophthalmia had a much higher prevalence of malnutrition than normal children, the relationship between the prevalence of malnutrition and the prevalence of xerophthalmia was explored. Using two different statistical approaches the prevalence of malnutrition within a community could not be demonstrated to be a good predictor of the prevalence of xerophthalmia within that community.

Body Height↗
PubMed1981

Incidence, prevalence, and scale of blinding malnutrition.

4595 pre-school-age children in six villages of West Java were examined every 3 months. The incidence of active corneal xerophthalmia was 5 per 1000 per year (95% confidence limits, 2.6-7.5), and the average prevalence during each round of examinations was 12 per 10000. In a randomised, multistage cluster survey of 27084 rural children throughout Indonesia the population-weighted prevalence of active corneal disease among pre-school-age children was 6.4 per 10000 (95% confidence limits 3.2-9.6), 53% of that in the longitudinal study areas. At an adjusted incidence rate of 2.7 per 1000 per year, over 60000 Indonesian children become xerophthalmic every year. By extrapolation of these findings about 500000 new cases of xerophthalmia, half of which lead to blindness, occur each year in India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Indonesia combined.

Blindness↗
PubMed1980

History of nightblindness: a simple tool for xerophthalmia screening.

Among 5925 preschool-age children examined in a house to house rural field study, X1B (Bitot's spot with xerosis) and/or an history of nightblindness (XN) was presented in 325. Mean serum vitamin A levels among those with isolated XN (13.9 microgram/dl), isolated X1B (13.4 micrograms/dl), and coexistent XN/X1B (12.1 microgram/dl) were similar, and significantly below that of normal age/sex/neighborhood matched controls (17.6, 17.1, and 18.3 microgram/dl, respectively). The mean serum vitamin A level of the matched controls was significantly below that of normal, randomly sampled children from the study population as a whole (20.6 microgarm/dl). As independent screening criteria, disregarding the presence of absence of other signs, twice as many children had a history of XN as had X1B (84 and 41% of all clinically abnormal children, respectively). Of randomly sampled children 55% but only 15% of cases of XN had serum vitamin A levels above 20 microgram/dl. Of children with a history of nightblindness 97% had impaired scotopic vision on objective testing, but the mean serum vitamin A levels among test positives and negatives were identical. These results suggest a properly eleicited history of nightblindness can be almost as specific and far more sensitive an index of vitamin A deficiency and early xerophthalmia than the prescence of Bitot's spots (X1B), and that vitamin A deficiency is a clustered, neighborhood phenomenon rather than an isolated, sporadic occurrence.

Child↗