Cellular immune competence and diarrheal morbidity in malnourished Bangladeshi children: a prospective field study.

A year-long prospective study of 152 Bangladeshi children with mild to moderate protein-calorie malnutrition related nutritional status and cellular immune defects to morbidity due to diarrheal, respiratory, and febrile diseases. In children older than 36 mo, wasting correlated with skin test anergy to three recall antigens and with inability to initiate hypersensitivity to dinitrochlorobenzene. In this older age group, anergy was associated with a 58% increased attack rate and an 83% increased duration of diarrheal diseases but not with febrile or respiratory infections. In stepwise regression analysis, this anergy effect was independent of the small negative impact of poorer nutritional status on morbidity. Ninety-three percent of diarrheal illnesses lasting at least 14 d were among anergic children. Cellular immune incompetence, indicated by anergy of unknown etiology, is associated with increased diarrheal morbidity and may promote the vicious cycle of repeated infections and deteriorating nutritional status.