Comparison of thymus size in normal versus malnourished children

Background. Undernutrition has a detrimental effect on lymphoid organs like thymus that are responsible for production of T cells. Severe thymus gland atrophy has been observed in children with severe acute malnutrition. Hence, this study was aimed to measure thymus size in children with normal, moderate, and severe acute malnutrition who were hospitalized to the pediatric ward. Methodology. A prospective observational study was conducted in pediatric ward with 60 children aged between 6 to 59 months. Based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria 20 children each were randomly selected as normal, moderate acute malnourished child and severe acute malnourished child. Anthropometric and thymic measurements were taken. Data was analyzed in SPSS v 29. ANOVA test and Post hoc Tukey HSD were done to find the difference. Results. Thymic index was also high among normal children when compared to malnourished children. This infers statistically significant thymus atrophy among the malnourished when compared to healthy children. Pairwise comparison of means using post-hoc Tukey HSD revealed significant difference between normal children and those children with malnourishment (p <0.001). Conclusion. The present investigation concluded that malnourished patients have thymic atrophy and recurrent infections. Hence thymic measurement can be used as a tool to detect immunological modifications in children with malnourishment.