Hope in Potassium

Acute diarrhea, the most dreaded epidemic disease of newborn babies, kills thousands every year.* Doctors do not know its cause or cure. But last week a doctor described a treatment (already proved quite successful) that may save many a young life.

Diarrhea (sometimes called "summer complaint") kills because it drains the baby's body of water and salts. Doctors have tried to prevent dehydration by feeding the victims large amounts of saline fluids, but this treatment did not help much. Something was needed--some substance that made it possible for babies to retain the fluids. After long study, Pediatrician Daniel C. Darrow, of Yale's School of Medicine, decided that potassium was the important substance; the old treatments were not using enough of it. Babies with diarrhea sometimes lose one-fourth of the potassium in their body cells.

Dr. Darrow began to give sick babies potassium injections, found that the treatment reduced deaths to "a very low figure." Reporting his improved treatment last week to medicos in Albany, N.Y., the doctor cautioned that too rapid injections may cause heart block. At the University of Texas School of Medicine, nurses who have given the Darrow treatment reported "miraculous" results.

* A 1944 epidemic in Texas killed 1,372 infants, more than the total U.S. death toll that year from infantile paralysis.

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