There is no mystery [1, 2] about “kwashiorkor”, which is a word from a Ghanaian tribe, my very own Krobo/Dangme/Ga megatribe [3, 4]. Indeed, it was when I was a toddler that the remarkable white woman based at the Princess Marie Louise Hospital in Accra (before the Gold Coast became Ghana) first described the condition which was brought to her attention by my fellow tribes folk [5,6].
Imagine my utter astonishment when, coming over to England to read Medicine in London University, I heard Lecturer after Lecturer state with unwarranted confidence that “kwashiorkor means red hair in an African language”. The word means no such thing in my tribe. Kwashiorkor, as I once pointed out to a British Professor of Paediatrics in this very medical journal “is, primarily, a sibling positional word, which requires careful explanation to the non-native” [3]. It is a reflection of the 'birth position' of the sufferer, before it is a pathology [4], a fact emphasized by Dr Cicely Willams whose descriptions of the condition have not been bettered by anyone [5, 6, 7, 8].
Apart from being a Krobo tribesman, I have a further reason for claiming that I know more about Kwashiorkor than all the non-Ghanaian experts that have written volumes about the syndrome (Cicely Williams excepted). And I say that for this reason: In my tribe, it was said of me (the second child) the day my younger brother was born while I was not yet completely weaned – “afor ese kwasiorkor” [3] which, literally means “it has been born after him kwasiorkor”, stressing my positional risk of being sandwiched between my elder brother, Agbetey, who was just 13 months older than me, and the just arrived sibling who was also just 17 months my junior. See http://www.konotey-ahulu.com/images/generation.jpg for the first 3 children of my parents Rev & Mrs Konotey-Ahulu in Generation VII, and note how closely spaced we were.
The whole tribe expected me to develop kwashiorkor because of the birth of my brother. “The reason I escaped the syndrome first described by Dr Cicely Williams [3, 4] was simply because my educated parents took the same steps that Professor Marsden described from Brazil [9]: I was fed with beans, eggs, milk, minced meat, and Ovaltine” [3]. Less fortunate relatives of my age in my tribe, whose parents also had 3 children in less than 3 years, “and of whom it was also said 'afor ese kwasiorkor' went on to develop kwashiorkor because they could only afford to be fed with maize products such as akasa and k enky” [3].
I went on to make the point that: “The sibling positional word became almost invariably associated with the syndrome Cicely Williams was investigating, and although the term kwashiorkor was occasionally attached to a child who never went on to get the disease ” (just as in my own case), whenever the the syndrome kwashiorkor was seen in a child there was, more likely than not, very close proximity to a younger sibling” [3]. Exceptions, of course, occurred, “when children were orphaned” (as would be the case in Malawi ravaged with AIDS), regardless of sibling positioning, or multiple births. Indeed, I described such children (with photographs) on my AIDS tour of African countries [Ref 10 – See Figure 6.14, page 124]. I also described in a man who was mistaken for suffering from HIV-AIDS [Ref 10, photographs on pages 80-82] what has been called the Adult Kwashiorkor syndrome “in which diarrhoea, pitting oedema, hepatomegaly, dermatopathy, mental apathy, and hair changes result from protein energy malnutrition as, for example, in the creatorrhoea and steatorrhoea of severe alcoholic chronic pancreatitis”. This syndrome was completely reversible in the man described [10] when his alcoholism [he was on one litre and half of gin a day] was treated, diabetes reversed, pancreatin supplied, and protein supplements given [See remarkable change in just 6 months – Ref 10]. Should we have spent research funds finding out how much antioxidants this man's diet contained?
I had the enormous privilege of meeting up with 93-year old Dame Cicely Williams in Oxford in 1986 when we were photographed together[See The Lancet, Ref 4 for what she looked like at 93!]. I thanked her profusely for all that she did in my tribe in those colonial days wihout electron microscopes and sophisticated analysers. We both were greatly baffled why many of today's experts (especially those who have little experience of a tropical sojourn)find it difficult to accept that “Kwashiorkor is the result of a social pathology before it is the outcome of a biochemical pathology” [4]. Clinical epidemiology ie answering the questions Who? Which? Where? When? Why? What? and How? is far and away the best tool to investigate a tropical phenomenon such as kwashiorkor, and Cicely Williams gets my Full Marks for employing that tool with hardly any funds for medical research.
I repeat what I said a decade or so ago in The Lancet: “Those of us who grew up in the kwashiorkor belt and who have also had the benefit of an excellent medical education cannot but caution our ministries of health and social welfare about the danger of missing the social pathology wood for the trees of free radicals and leukotrienes”.
Nothing to declare, except that Kwashiorkor is my tribal language.
References
1 Fuchs GJ. Antioxidants for children with kwashiorkor. Brit Med J 2005; 330: 1095-1096.
2 Ciliberto H, Ciliberto M, Briend A, Ashorn P, Bier D, Manary M. Antioxidant supplementation for the prevention of kwashiorkor in Malawian children: randomised, double blind, placebo controlled trial. Brit Med J 2005; 330: 1109-1111.
3 Konotey-Ahulu FID. Kwashiorkor. Brit Med J 1991; 302: 180-181.
4 Konotey-Ahulu FID. Issues in kwashiorkor. Lancet 1994; 343: 548.
5 Williams CD. A nutritional disease of childhood associated with a maize diet. Arch Dis Child 1933; 8: 423-8.
6 Williams CD. Kwashiorkor – a nutritional disease of children associated with a maize diet. Lancet 1935; 2: 1151-52.
7 Williams CD. Kwashiorkor. JAMA 1953; 1280-85.
8 Williams CD. Social Medicine in Developing Countries (Millroy Lecture, Royal College of Physicians). Lancet 1958; 863-66.
9 Marsden PD. Kwashiorkor. Brit Med J 1990; 301: 1036-37.
10 Konotey-Ahulu FID. What Is AIDS? T-A'D Co. Watford 1996.
Competing interests: None declared
Source Link as http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/330/7500/1095#106854 14 May 2005