Research area:           

Nutrition & Health

Host Organisation & country :

Centre de Recherche Médicale et Sanitaire (CERMES)

Summary

Several factors continue to threaten the nutritional status of children under five years in Africa. In addition to this, containment measures adopted in response to the Covid-19 pandemic have led to further disruptions in food production and distribution and in humanitarian supply chains. Medically, the commonly used protocol for the management of Acute Malnutrition such as those faced in Africa remains imported fortified blended flours. Dr Karidio will develop a new formulation of microbiota-directed therapeutic flours from local ingredients as an alternative to imported ones.

Grantee Description

Dr Karidio is an ARISE-PP fellow and the Head of the Platform of Immunology and Hæmatology at CERMES in Niger Republic. He obtained his PhD. in Biochemistry from Ege University with a research thesis focused on “Isolation of Anticancer Agents from Microorganisms and Investigation of their Effectiveness”.

Currently, Dr Karidio’s research focuses basically on microbiota targeted nutrition (at all life stages), for sustainable, preventive, maintenance, and correction of health status: Nutrition and Health

Project: “Investigation of local food sources of prebiotics for the prevention and management of moderate acute malnutrition in Niger.”

In 2020, the number of West African children (in general) and those of Niger (in particular) that suffered from malnutrition (Acute malnutrition). In health institutions, moderate acute malnutrition is essentially treated with therapeutic flours (imported at a high cost). Currently, there is a growing body of literature reporting a pivotal role of the microbiota in the nutritional status of infants and children. Feeding infants and children with prebiotic-rich foods would eventually favour a beneficial qualitative and/or quantitative composition of the microbiota characteristic of a healthy status. Dr Karidio is interested in the local production, with local ingredients, of microbiota-directed (prebiotic-rich), therapeutic fours as alternative for imported one.