The duration of diarrhea and fever is associated with growth faltering in rural Malawian children aged 6-18 months

Nutrition Journal

Short Report

Kenneth Maleta¹  Chrissie Thakwalakwa¹  Gus Meuli²  Ariana Weisz²  Indi Trehan³  Mark Manary⁴ 

[1] College of Medicine, University of Malawi, Private Bag 360, Blantyre 3, Malawi;Washington University in St. Louis, Campus Box 8116, One Children's Place, 63110, St. Louis, MO, USA;Washington University in St. Louis, Campus Box 8116, One Children's Place, 63110, St. Louis, MO, USA;College of Medicine, University of Malawi, Private Bag 360, Blantyre 3, Malawi;Washington University in St. Louis, Campus Box 8116, One Children's Place, 63110, St. Louis, MO, USA;College of Medicine, University of Malawi, Private Bag 360, Blantyre 3, Malawi;USDA Children's Nutrition Research Center, Baylor College of Medicine, 1100 Bates St., 77030, Houston, TX, USA;

关键词: Cough;    Diarrheal Disease;    Complementary Feeding;    Complementary Food;    Linear Mixed Model Analysis;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-2891-10-25

 received in 2010-12-07, accepted in 2011-03-20,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

Nutrition support programs that only focus upon better complementary feeding remain an insufficient means of limiting growth faltering in vulnerable populations of children. To determine if symptoms of acute infections correlate with the incidence of growth faltering in rural Malawian children, the associations between fever, diarrhea, and cough with anthropometric measures of stunting, wasting, and underweight were investigated. Data were analyzed from a trial where 209 children were provided with adequate complementary food and followed fortnightly from 6-18 months of age. Linear mixed model analysis was used to test for associations. Diarrheal disease was inversely associated with changes in height-for-age Z-score (HAZ), mid-upper arm circumference Z-score (MUACZ), and weight-for-age Z-score (WAZ). Fever was also inversely associated with changes in MUACZ and WAZ. These results suggest that initiatives to reduce febrile and diarrheal diseases are needed in conjunction with improved complementary feeding to limit growth faltering in rural Malawi.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Weisz et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.