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Record W4413819459 · doi:10.1101/2025.08.26.25334519

Fecal pH as a marker of stunting among children hospitalized for diarrhea and other non-diarrheal pathologies

2025· preprint· en· W4413819459 on OpenAlexfundno aff
Md. Shabab Hossain, Md. Mahbubul Hoque, Mustafa Mahfuz, Tahmeed Ahmed

Bibliographic record

VenuemedRxiv · 2025
Typepreprint
Languageen
FieldNursing
TopicClinical Nutrition and Gastroenterology
Canadian institutionsnot available
FundersInternational Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, BangladeshGlobal Affairs CanadaBill and Melinda Gates Foundation
KeywordsDiarrheaFecesDiarrheal diseaseDiarrheal diseasesMedicineEnvironmental healthPediatricsInternal medicineBiologyMicrobiology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Background: Fecal pH is a simple, non-invasive diagnostic tool used for initial screening of certain gastrointestinal (GI) diseases. Increased fecal pH indicates reduction of beneficial microbiota in the gut, which has emerged as a key factor contributing to stunting. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association of fecal pH with stunting in hospitalized children. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 200 children aged 06-24 months getting admitted in icddr,b Dhaka Hospital with diarrhea and Dhaka Shishu Hospital for other non-diarrheal pathologies. Length-for-age Z scores (LAZ) was measured and data on factors affecting linear growth was recorded. Fecal pH was measured on freshly collected stool samples following standard procedure. Multivariate linear regression was performed to explore relationship between fecal pH and LAZ scores. Results: The mean fecal pH of diarrheal and non-diarrheal children was 5.54±0.98 and 5.95±0.76, respectively. After inclusion of factors affecting linear growth into the regression model, a statistically significant inverse association between fecal pH and LAZ scores was observed in non-diarrheal children (p<0.01). However, such association did not apply for diarrheal children. Conclusion: Increased fecal pH in non-diarrheal children was found to have significant association with stunted growth, making fecal pH a possible indirect determinant of childhood stunting. However, no such associations were observed in case of diarrheal children.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.002
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.003
Threshold uncertainty score0.006

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.002
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0020.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.017
GPT teacher head0.317
Teacher spread0.300 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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