Association of diarrhea and low serum retinol in Peruvian children.

To examine the relationship between acute diarrhea and vitamin A status, a study was conducted in 137 children (72 with diarrhea and 65 illness-free control subjects) in the city of Lima, Peru. Serum retinol was measured spectrophotometrically in samples collected in 1987 and kept frozen until they were analyzed simultaneously in 1989. Serum retinol was significantly lower in the children with diarrhea (mean +/- SD: 0.51 +/- 0.48 mumol/L) than in those without diarrhea (1.00 +/- 0.32 mumol/L; 1 mumol/L retinol = 28.6 micrograms/dL). The multivariate estimate of the effect of diarrhea (-0.464 mumol/L) in a model that incorporated age, sex, and acute malnutrition (ie, weight-for-height) as confounding variables was essentially the same as the unadjusted difference (-0.492 mumol/L). Thus, this model showed that the retinol concentration in the serum depends greatly on the presence of diarrhea. These findings suggest that diarrhea, as has been shown for other infections, may lead to lower circulating retinol concentrations and perhaps to its depletion.