Congenital diarrhea with intestinal inflammation and epithelial immaturity.

We report an interesting case of congenital inflammatory bowel disease and intestinal epithelial immaturity that presented as secretory diarrhea. No infectious, metabolic, or anatomical basis for these findings was identified. As differentiated from previous reports of neonatal enteropathies, this infant demonstrated involvement of both the small and large intestine with histopathologic findings of acute and chronic inflammation, extensive submucosal fibrosis, and "flat" small intestine mucosa. In addition, this patient had a polyamine deficiency (a primary or secondary phenomenon), which may have contributed to delayed epithelial maturation. These findings suggest that the inflammatory bowel disease and altered epithelial maturation contributed to a fatal intractable diarrhea.