High dose vitamin A supplementation in the course of pneumonia in Vietnamese children

We carried out a randomized, placebo‐controlled, double‐blinded trial to evaluate the effect on morbidity of high dose oral vitamin A, given on hospital admission to 592 children aged 1–59 months with moderate and severe pneumonia. Severely underweight children were not included, but 45% were modera...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Acta Paediatrica Vol. 86; no. 10; pp. 1052 - 1055
Main Authors:	Si, NV, Grytter, C., Vy, NNT, Hue, NB, Pedersen, FK
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-10-1997 Blackwell
Subjects:	Biological and medical sciences Child nutrition disorders Child, Preschool developing countries Dietary Supplements Double-Blind Method Female Human viral diseases Humans Infant Infant, Newborn Infectious diseases Male Medical sciences Morbidity pneumonia Pneumonia - therapy Treatment Outcome Vietnam Viral diseases Viral diseases of the respiratory system and ent viral diseases vitamin A Vitamin A - therapeutic use Asia Vietnam Human Preschool age Lung disease Pneumonia Respiratory disease Treatment efficiency Vitamin Developing countries Infant Retinol Combined treatment Supplementation High dose Child Pneumopathy
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Summary:	We carried out a randomized, placebo‐controlled, double‐blinded trial to evaluate the effect on morbidity of high dose oral vitamin A, given on hospital admission to 592 children aged 1–59 months with moderate and severe pneumonia. Severely underweight children were not included, but 45% were moderately underweight. The vitamin A and placebo groups were comparable in baseline characteristics. Four patients died. Among all of the surviving children, no differences were found regarding mean time for normalization of fever, respiratory rate and time of hospitalization. Stratification for moderate malnutrition, degree of pneumonia, age and sex revealed moderately malnourished vitamin A‐supplemented children to have a shorter time of hospitalization (p= 0. 04), due to an effect in females aged > 12 months (p= 0. 02) and females with very severe pneumonia (p= 0. 048). This study indicates that, in developing countries like Vietnam, supplementation with vitamin A in children with pneumonia could shorten the recovery rate in the ones that are undernourished, especially females > 1 y old.
Bibliography:	ArticleID:APA1052 istex:81A2458F56D62E03EE0CD1CC1960380ADB796238 ark:/67375/WNG-3TP0GNFK-F On behalf of the Danish‐Vietnamese ARI Study Group. ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 ObjectType-News-3 content type line 23
ISSN:	0803-5253 1651-2227
DOI:	10.1111/j.1651-2227.1997.tb14805.x