Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital have uncovered an intervention that could potentially improve outcomes for children with malnutrition, a condition that contributes to nearly half of all deaths among children younger than 5. The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“One poorly understood consequence of malnutrition is intestinal barrier erosion, which allows bacteria to escape the gut and cause invasive infections, including sepsis, which are leading causes of mortality in malnourished children,” said study lead and co-corresponding author Dr. Geoffrey Preidis, associate professor of pediatrics—gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition and member of the USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor and Texas Children’s.

The intestinal barrier is a dynamic system maintained through coordinated functions of the mucus layer, the junctions between epithelial cells lining the gut and immune cells. In addition, gut microbes and products of their metabolism also play a role in regulating intestinal barrier function, but how this occurs is not well understood.