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Coconut Oil May Help Fight Childhood
Pneumonia
Symptoms eased faster when it was added to
antibiotic therapy, study found
By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter, US News and World Report
THURSDAY, Oct.
30 (HealthDay News) -- Virgin coconut oil, added to antibiotic therapy,
may help relieve the symptoms of community-acquired pneumonia in kids
faster than antibiotic therapy alone, a new study finds.
Children who received coconut oil
therapy along with antibiotics had fewer crackles (a wheezing sound in
the lungs), a shorter time with an elevated respiratory rate and fever,
better oxygen saturation in the blood, and shorter hospital stays,
according to the study.
"Earlier normalization of respiratory
rate and resolution of crackles could also mean possible earlier
discharge," said the study's lead author, Dr. Gilda Sapphire Erguiza, a
pediatric pulmonologist at the Philippine Children's Medical Center in
Quezon City.
The study's findings were due to be
presented Wednesday at the American College of Chest Physicians meeting
in Philadelphia.
Community-acquired pneumonia is an
infection of the lungs that is contracted outside a hospital setting. It
is a serious infection in children and affects as many as 34 to 40
youngsters per 1,000 children in Europe and North America, according to
the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). Lower respiratory
infections are one of the leading causes of childhood mortality in
developing countries, according to the AAFP.
The current study included 40 children
between the ages of 3 months and 5 years old. All had community-acquired
pneumonia and were being treated intravenously with the antibiotic
ampicillin.
Half of the group was randomized to also
receive oral virgin coconut oil in a daily dose of 2 milliliters per
every kilogram of weight. The oil was given for three days in a row.
The researchers found that the
respiratory rate normalized in 32.6 hours for the virgin coconut oil
group versus 48.2 hours for the control group, according to the study.
After three days, patients in the control group were more likely to
still have crackles than those in the coconut oil group -- 60 percent of
the controls still had crackles compared to 25 percent of the coconut
oil group.
Those in the coconut oil group also had
fevers for a shorter time, had normal oxygen saturation faster, and had
shorter hospital stays, but Erguiza said these findings did not reach
statistical significance.
How might the coconut oil work to ease
pneumonia? Erguiza hypothesized that it may boost ampicillin's
effectiveness because it contains lauric acid, which is known to have
antimicrobial properties, she said.
One expert said the findings aren't
definitive, however.
"This is a very interesting but small
study. The jury's still out as to whether there's a real benefit here,"
said Dr. Daniel Rauch, director of the pediatric hospitalist program at
New York University Langone Medical Center.
Rauch said he wouldn't discourage a
parent from trying this treatment, as long as they were still using
antibiotics, but he said it's important that children aren't forced to
take virgin coconut oil, or any other oil for that matter. The concern,
he said, is that if a child is forced to ingest something like coconut
oil, and doesn't really don't want to, he or she may end up choking on
it and aspirating the oil into the lungs, which is very dangerous.
In an effort to prevent some pneumonias
from occurring in the first place, the Pneumococcal Awareness Council of
Experts initiated a "Global Call to Action" on Oct. 24 to urge greater
access to the pneumococcal vaccine in poor countries. According to the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's journal, Morbidity
and Mortality Weekly Report, the pneumococcal vaccine has been
introduced in 26 countries worldwide, though none are low-income
countries.
More
information
To learn more
about pneumonia, visit the
U.S. National Library of Medicine.
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