Plasma nonessential to essential amino acid ratio in marasmus

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Abstract
A study of amino acid imbalance ratio in 30 cases of marasmus and 20 controls is presented. Contrary to previous reports (in no case from more than 14 cases of marasmus), we found the ratio of nonessential to essential amino acids is significantly lower in the marasmus group as compared with the control group. Equally interesting is the finding that the total optical densities of the essential (leucine, isoleucine, methionine, and valine) amino acid bands and the nonessential (glycine, serine, glutamine, and taurine) amino acid bands are significantly higher in marasmic children than in the controls. Also, previous workers did not find significant alterations in total plasma amino acids in marasmus compared with controls.

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