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Context
Severe acute malnutrition (SAM) causes over one million child deaths per year.1 Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) classifies clinically stable children with good appetite as having ‘uncomplicated SAM’. They are treated as outpatients using specially formulated ready-to-use therapeutic foods.2 Many programmes also give routine antibiotics. This is not evidence-based, but a continuation from old, inpatient-only, treatment approaches where children often presented late and were, hence, much sicker on admission. Since antibiotics also have costs and potential risks, this study evaluated their use in uncomplicated SAM.
Methods
This is a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised trial examining two different oral antibiotics, amoxicillin and cefdinir, …
Footnotes
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Competing interests MK attended the 2012 WHO expert meeting on SAM3, and received funding for coauthoring an unrelated systematic review (on infant SAM) with IT and MJM.