Intimate partner violence and early child growth: a community-based cohort study in Nicaragua

BMC Pediatrics

Lars-Åke Persson¹  Eliette Valladares³  Ulf Högberg⁴  Mariano Salazar² 

[1] International Maternal and Child Health (IMCH), Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden;Epidemiology and Global Health, Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden;Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Nicaraguan National Autonomous University, León, Nicaragua;Obstetrics and Gynecology, Department of Clinical Sciences Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

关键词: Gender;    Child growth;    Intimate partner violence;   

Others  :  1170761
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2431-12-82

 received in 2011-05-09, accepted in 2012-06-22,  发布年份 2012

【 摘 要 】

Background

This study analyses whether a mother’s exposure to different forms of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) during pregnancy was associated with the index child linear growth, and whether these associations were modified by the gender of the child.

Methods

A pregnancy cohort of 478 women in León, Nicaragua, resulted in 461 live births. From this group, 81% (375/461) children were available for anthropometric follow-up at 40 to 46 months. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to assess the association between IPV and height-for-age Z-scores, adjusting for confounding factors.

Results

Sixty-three percent (236/375) of the mothers had been exposed to some form of IPV during pregnancy (emotional, physical, sexual or controlling behavior). After adjustment for confounding factors, maternal exposure to any IPV during pregnancy was associated with 0.24 lower mean height-for-age Z-scores (p = 0.02). A separate analysis of each IPV type showed that emotional, physical or sexual IPV during pregnancy were not significantly associated with lower mean height-for-age Z-scores, whereas ever exposure to controlling behavior by the father of the child was related to 0.29 lower mean height-for-age Z-scores (p < 0.01) When stratified by gender, these associations remained significant only for young girls.

Conclusions

This study has contributed to the growing amount of evidence pointing to the pervasive effect of different forms of IPV on child health. Our study highlights the relevance of maternal autonomy for linear child growth, especially for young girls in the Nicaraguan context.

【 授权许可】

   
2012 Salazar et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

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