Dietary advice for acute diarrhoea in general practice: a pilot study

Although there is no evidence that diet shortens acute diarrhoea, doctors tend to give dietary advice.

To test the effects of eating and drinking normally on the duration of acute diarrhoea and on the feeling of well-being.

Randomized single-blinded, controlled trial in urban and semi-urbanized areas. Patients aged 3-70 years suffering with diarrhoea at least three times on the preceding day, lasting no more than five days, were eligible. Two regimes were randomly allocated to practices. In the intervention group, the advice was to eat everything one liked and to drink more. The control group was advised to follow a strict regime of fasting for 24 hours and was subsequently given specified limitations.

No significant differences between the 44 patients in the intervention group and the 27 in the control group were found for the duration of watery diarrhoea (median 14 versus 13 hours), or the total number of evacuations (2 versus 2.5). Among the items concerning well-being, only nausea (51% versus 23%) showed a significant difference.

In this pilot study, the null hypothesis that both treatments will show equal results cannot be confirmed or rejected because of the small number of participants. Despite our efforts, we included fewer patients than expected. This might be due to the data-forms, which were rather complicated and voluminous for both, including doctors and participants.