Researchers at Aga Khan University (AKU) are harnessing the power of stem cells to create mini-intestines that can generate new insights into how malnutrition occurs. Malnutrition is a major public health problem in the developing world, with four out of ten children under the age of five in Pakistan suffering from stunting, while one in three children is underweight, according to the National Nutrition Survey 2018.
An AKU statement on Monday said pertaining to the research that an unhygienic environment, contaminated water, inadequate diet and poor maternal health during pregnancy are some of the major factors leading to environmental enteropathy or EE. EE is an important, but poorly understood, intermediary condition, which is characterised by inflammation of the gut, that leads to chronic malnutrition.
Existing research into malnutrition has extensively documented its causes and shed light on the structural and genetic differences between a healthy and a malnourished intestine. However, until now researchers have been unable to explore how EE originates at the cell level because of a range of ethical limitations and practical obstacles, especially in young children. Therefore, studies into the genesis of EE requires require models of healthy and malnourished guts to be developed to explore disease processes.
