Sucrose or Glucose for Diarrhea

Abstract

Water moves along osmotic gradients. Acute diarrhea is due to impaired solute absorption or to increased solute excretion. It seems reasonable, as well as traditional, to lower the osmolarity of the gut's contents in diarrhea by starvation and water. Breast milk, when fully digested, has nearly twice the osmolarity of plasma, and giving it (or bread and butter1) as advocated in Dacca2 might prolong diarrhea. The 24-hour purging rate of the patients of Black et al on an unknown quantity of milk equalled that of the first eight hours, and diarrhea persisted for 60 hours.