Clinical trials

Two cross-sectional, repeated-pass, community-based studies will be carried out during the school year. The first study will be conducted from November to December. This period corresponds to the end of the rainy season and the end of the mango season, which is one of the main sources of vitamin A in the Orodara region. The second survey will be carried out 5 to 6 months (April-May of the following year) after data collection for the first study, corresponding to the mango season. The same schoolchildren recruited during the first phase of data collection (5 to 6 months earlier) will be the participants in the second study. The interest of this study is to use nuclear techniques to implement a strategy for the precise and accurate determination of Vitamin A status in order to reinforce existing Vitamin A interventions and policies.

This experimental study aims to test an alternative protocol for managing acute malnutrition in children aged 6-59 months in Burkina Faso. This alternative protocol consists of using RUTF instead of RUSF for the management of moderate acute malnutrition and reduced-dose RUTF instead of standard-dose RUTF for the treatment of severe acute malnutrition. The main questions are: 1. Does treating children with moderate acute malnutrition using RUTF lead to a non-inferior programmatic and sustained recovery rate compared to the standard care with RUSF? 2. Does treating children with uncomplicated severe acute malnutrition using a reduced dose of RUTF lead to a non-inferior programmatic and sustained recovery rate compared to the standard care with a standard dose of RUFT? Secondly, the study will investigate the effect of this alternative protocol compared to the standard protocol on cost-effectiveness, psychomotor development, weight and linear growth and incidence of relapses.

The goal of this experimental study is to test the efficacy of a new formulation - The microbiome-directed food (MDF) to treat acute malnutrition among children aged 6 to 23 months. The main questions are: * Does treating children with moderate or severe uncomplicated malnutrition using MDF leads to higher programmatic recovery rate compared to standard of care ? * Does treating children with moderate or severe uncomplicated malnutrition using MDF leads to higher sustained recovery rate compared to standard of care ? The MDF will be compared to Ready-to-use supplementary food (RUSF) for moderately malnourished children, and to Ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) for severely malnourished children to see the effects on recovery and sustained recovery rate.