Malnutrition and malabsorption.

Malnutrition and diarrhea constitute a binomial practically inseparable where the factors of the environmental contamination act in a decisive way to trigger the symptoms due to the derangements in the digestive-absorptive process. Fecal flora bacterial overgrowth in the small bowel lumen induces innumerous modification in the intestinal microecology causing morpohological lesions and bile salt deconjugation and all together leads to decrease of the intestinal absorptive surface, glucose malabsorption, and sodium secretion. These morphological and functional derangements due to the unfavorable environmental conditions constitute the picture designated tropical enteropathy, and the intensity of the symptoms are dependent upon various factors including individual susceptibility.