artículo científico
Infections and infectious diseases in a malnourished population: a long-term prospective field study
Fecha
1977Autor
Mata Jiménez, Leonardo
Urrutia, Juan José
Institución
Resumen
The importance of infectious disease and its
role in the shaping of the history of mankind
has been recognized since Biblical times.
Pestilences were recorded in many classical
books, while most religions developed concepts
and traditions pertaining to the prevention
of certain communicable diseases. It is
in the last 20 years, however, that the role of
malnutrition in determining the behavior of
infectious diseases has become fully recognized.
The most obvious manifestation of
the interaction is the exceedingly high case
fatality ratio of many infectious diseases as
compared with the behavior of societies living
under better conditions (Scrimshaw et al.,
1968). Infection in underdeveloped populations
is an unavoidable event and hits all individuals
regardless of their nutritional status.
Therefore, infection is an important" component
in the complex causality of malnutrition.
The present observations were derived
from the files of a long-term prospective
study, the "Cauque study", carried out in a
typical Mayan Indian village in the Guatemalan
highlands