Applied Microbiology

Infantile malnutrition is scourge that causes the death of 3.1 million children aged less than 5 years in the world each year. Recently,several studies have focused on the effect of intestinal flora on the weight regulation. In this context, we set two principal objectives of our work, in which one is to characterize the clinical profile and the composition of intestinal flora of the children malnourished and the healthy ones, residents at the town of Mascara (Algeria). The second objective is to specify the impact of the administration

of the re-nutrition milk on the intestinal composition of the microbiota of the malnourished children. So a group of 40 children of the two sexes aged between 2 and 36 months were selected for this study. A clinical examination near the podiatrists of the hospital Meslem Tayeb of the town of Mascara and a microbiological analysis of fecal matter were done. This research made it possible to note that the malnourished children included in this study suffer from a serious malnutrition characterized by a delay of growth and a remarkable weight insufficiency and that their intestinal flora is quantitatively and qualitatively different with that from the healthy one on one hand and on the other hand the administration of re-nutrition milk does not have any significant influence on the composition of the intestinal flora of these malnourished children.