Author Description

After a period of relative neglect, nutrition as a medical science is now an area of great clinical and investigative activity. This renewed interest in clinical nutrition derives in large part from observations suggesting that early nutritional deprivation not only interferes with the maintenance of health, growth resistance to disease but if present during critical periods central nervous system development may also cause permanent impairment of intellectual capacity. Studies on brain development during malnutrition have continued to demonstrate the vulnerability of the developing brain to nutritional insult. Winick (1968) has emphasized that nutritional deficiency occurring while cells of the central nervous system are actively dividing results in a permanent decrease in central nervous system cell number. Later nutritional deficiency which results in decrease in cell size appears to be recoverable. Perhaps even more important than effects of malnutrition on brain cell number is the effect on brain protein synthesis and myelination. As different regions of the brain grow at different rates and human cerebellar and cerebral cell number increase for the first few months of life, newborn nutritional deficiency may compromise rain development. Dobbing (1973) has focused attention on the vulnerability of the brain to nutritional insult during the brain growth spurt which occurs around the time of birth. In the human, this period extends throughout the third trimester of pregnancy and into the second postnatal year. The full implication of nutritional deprivation on the development of intelligence is not entirely clear. However, the data available do suggest a permanent decrease in intellectual function infancy (Cravioto, J. and DeLicardie, 1971; Cabak, V. and Majanvik, 1965; Winick, M. and Rosso, P., 1969). Thus, great demands are placed on the pediatricians and obstetricians who supervise the health of pregnant mothers and infants to eliminate sub-normal substrate provision to the human fetus and the newborn during this critical period when the infant is at its greatest risk. Worldwide, the most frequent cause of infant malnutrition is, unfortunately, still the limited availability of foodstuffs to both pregnant mothers and newborn infants. However, even in the more affluent societies malnutrition is frequently a consequence of utero-placental insufficiency, prematurity or neonatal starvation due to surgical procedure, congenital anomalies or other forms of distress which prevent adequate oral feeding. Provision of calories by means other than oral feeding are important not only during critical periods of early brain development but may also be necessary in the older infant or child with chronic disease associated with severe nutritional impairment or in children requiring good nutrition for optimal recovery from an acute ailment. Dudrick's work with intravenous feeding has paved the way for an aggressive nutritional approach to infants malnourished or at risk of becoming malnourished. Dudrick showed that beagle puppies receiving a hypertonic mixture of glucose, protein hydrouelysate, minerals and vitamins by a central vein could maintain normal growth and development over prolonged periods of time. This volume is an outgrowth of that conference. The editors are grateful to J. Pfrimmer Company, Norwich Pharmacal Company and Wardroom Company for their support which made the conference and this volume possible. Some of the studies reported on at the conference were controversial, and even though the editors and many of the participants did not agree with some of the views expressed, we felt that the data presented had created sufficient stimulation to justify publication. For example, the very aggressive approach for treatment of the fetus subjected to uteroueplacental insufficiency outlined by Dr. Heller opens a completely unexplored area of treatment and preventive medicine. Much more research in this area is needed and should probably be performed in primates. The varying incidences of catheter sepsis in different centers clearly emphatizes the importance of aseptic techniques and supervision and improvement of these techniques should probably take precedence over the prophylactic administration of amphotericin B as suggested by Dr. Brennen. In this volume we have attempted to provide information concerned with biochemical and metabolic adaptations during develop. We have organized this book so that the more basic chapters early so as to provide a foundation for later chapters dealing with technique and application. It is our belief that only through appreciation and understanding of biochemical and metabolic development can we rationally approach nutritional therapy of ants and children.