The pathogen Cryptosporidium is a major cause of childhood diarrhea in low- and middle-income countries. New findings from a study with icddr,b suggest that some children with Cryptosporidium infection experienced growth faltering without the usual symptoms of diarrhoea, dehydration and coughing.

Long-term arsenic exposure from early childhood can cause permanent genetic-level damage to children’s ability to fend off diseases, new icddr,b study suggests. Immunity of arsenic-exposed children has shown similar characteristics like aged people, suggesting that certain cells of their immune system have ‘started growing older and become weaker’; the signs of onset of this change was detectable as early as at 9 years of age.

Children are among those mostly suffering and dying from diseases caused by impure water. Recent icddr,b evidence suggests that these children could not only have survived but also have attained better development with improved water quality and better nutrition.

One major diarrhoea-causing pathogen recently found in Dhaka city sludge has shown resistance to Colistin - a last-resort antibiotic for infection control widely used in the poultry industry in Bangladesh. The Colistin-resistant bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli) was multi-drug resistant (MDR), showing resistance to 11 different antibiotics tested.