Haggerty P A, Manunebo M N, Ashworth A, Muladi K, Kirkwood B R
Centre for Human Nutrition, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK.
Int J Epidemiol. 1994 Oct;23(5):1040-9. doi: 10.1093/ije/23.5.1040.
A community-based prospective study of diarrhoeal morbidity of weaning-age children in 18 geographically separate village clusters was conducted as the baseline phase of a controlled trial of a hygiene education intervention to reduce diarrhoeal diseases in rural Zaire. For 12 weeks trained interviewers collected information at weekly home visits about the diarrhoeal morbidity of 2082 children aged 3-35 months. Included in the analyses were 1914 children (92%) with 9 or more complete weeks of data. Mothers' reporting of the existence or otherwise of episodes appeared reliable, and more than 70% of children had at least one episode of diarrhoea during the 12-week study period, the mean number of episodes being 1.9 per child. Reporting of the start and termination of diarrhoeal episodes was, however, irregularly distributed among the 7 days between successive home interviews, with 36% of all episodes reported as starting on interview days, and 29% reported as ending the day before an interview: in each case, only 14% would have been expected. After adjusting for these reporting biases, 61% of the episodes lasted 2-4 days, but a number of very long duration were also reported, and the mean duration of the episodes was 4.8 days. Children, had, on average, 9.2 days of diarrhoea during the study period. Contrasts with previous characterizations of reporting error in diarrhoeal studies are noted.
作为在扎伊尔农村地区开展的一项减少腹泻病的卫生教育干预对照试验的基线阶段，对18个地理位置分散的村庄集群中断奶期儿童的腹泻发病率进行了一项基于社区的前瞻性研究。在12周的时间里，经过培训的访员每周进行家访，收集了2082名3至35个月大儿童的腹泻发病信息。分析纳入了1914名儿童（92%），他们有9周或更长时间的完整数据。母亲对腹泻发作情况的报告似乎可靠，在为期12周的研究期间，超过70%的儿童至少有一次腹泻发作，平均每名儿童发作次数为1.9次。然而，腹泻发作开始和结束的报告在连续两次家访之间的7天里分布不均，所有发作中有36%报告在访视日开始，29%报告在访视前一天结束：在每种情况下，预期比例仅为14%。在对这些报告偏差进行调整后，61%的发作持续2至4天，但也报告了一些持续时间很长的发作，发作的平均持续时间为4.8天。在研究期间，儿童平均有9.2天腹泻。文中指出了与以往腹泻病研究中报告误差特征的对比。
