Frequency of Hypomagnesemia in Children with Malnutrition

Abstract

Objective: To determine the hypomagnesemia in children with malnutrition at tertiary care Hospital. Patients and methods: This study was conducted in the department of paediatrics at Liaquat University Hospital Hyderabad from August 2013 to February 2014. All the children aged 06 to 59 months, of either gender had > 06-month duration of malnutrition were recruited and evaluated for hypomagnesaemia. The serum magnesium value < 1.8 mg/dL was considered as hypomagnesaemia. All the information was collected via study proforma and analysis of data was done by SPSS version 26. Result: During six month, 159 children with malnutrition were studied for their magnesium level, of which 70.4% were males and 29.6% were females. The overall mean age of patients was 35.97±12.72 month and mean duration of disease was 9.83±1.41 months. Overall hypomagnesemia was found in 72% children with malnutrition. The overall average of hypomagnesemia was 31.63±10.92 and hypomagnesaemia was observed significantly higher among male children compared to females (p=0.02), and was statistically significant according to the disease duration (p= 0.05). Conclusion: As per study conclusion the hypomagnesaemia observed to be highly frequent (72%) among children with malnutrition. Keywords: Malnutrition, Hypomagnesaemia, Mid-upper arm circumference