[Selenium administration in children with SIRS]

At the Clinic for Paediatric Surgery of the University of Dresden, in a time period ranging from 5/1994 to 12/1996, all patients aged between 1 and 16 years with severe inflammatory surgical diseases or extended scalded skin, were given an adjuvant selenium substitution. As control group, all patients with the same diagnosis and age treated during the months 1/1997 to 12/1998, did not receive this adjuvant selenium substitution. All these patients fulfilled the criteria of "Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome" (SIRS). The selenium-therapy group consisted of 34 patients and the control group without substitution consisted of 31 patients. The following laboratory parameters were measured on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th and last treatment day: white blood cell count, interleukin 6, C-reactive protein, fibrinogen, malondialdehyde, activity of glutathione peroxidase in plasma and level of selenium in plasma and whole blood.

The initially high interleukin 6 rates declined significantly in both groups from the 2nd day on. The acute phase proteins, i.e. the C-reactive protein and fibrinogen, normalized in both groups after the 3rd day of treatment. The initial low rates of selenium in plasma and blood gained more rapidly a normal level in the therapy group than in the control group. On the 1st day of therapy the glutathione peroxidase activity in plasma was in both groups at the inferior limit of norm range and remained at this level in the control group for the whole observation period. In the selenium-substitution group on the contrary, these initial low values raised to the double as an expression of an elevated cell membrane protection. The initial significant elevated malondialdehyde rates in both groups, expressing a raised lipidperoxidation, fell down to a normal level in the selenium-substitution group, whereas they remained at their initial high level in the control group during the whole observation period.

The substitution of selenium in children with SIRS is a supportive therapy.