Monitoring the Adequacy of Catch-Up Growth Among Moderately Malnourished Children Receiving Home-Based Therapy Using Mid-Upper Arm Circumference in Southern Malawi

Each year more children die from moderate than severe malnutrition. Home-based therapy (HBT) using Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTF) has proven to successfully treat uncomplicated childhood malnutrition on an outpatient basis. This study attempts to discern if Mid-upper Arm Circumference (MUAC)...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Maternal and child health journal Vol. 15; no. 7; pp. 980 - 984
Main Authors: Connor, Nicholas E., Manary, Mark J.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Boston Springer US 01.10.2011
Springer
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Analysis
Anthropometry
Arm - anatomy & histology
Child Nutrition Disorders - diet therapy
Child, Preschool
Children
Children & youth
Childrens health
Data collection
Databases, Factual
Developing countries
Edema
Female
Food
Food Supply - methods
Gynecology
Home Care Services
Humans
Infant
LDCs
Malawi
Male
Malnutrition
Maternal and Child Health
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Nutritional status
Pediatrics
Population Economics
Population Surveillance
Program Evaluation
Public Health
Retrospective Studies
Sociology
Standard scores
Statistical models
Statistics
Malawi
Home based therapy
CMAM
Ready-to-use therapeutic food
Anthropometry
Moderate malnutrition
Arm circumference
ISSN:1092-7875, 1573-6628, 1573-6628
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Each year more children die from moderate than severe malnutrition. Home-based therapy (HBT) using Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTF) has proven to successfully treat uncomplicated childhood malnutrition on an outpatient basis. This study attempts to discern if Mid-upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) measurements collected by community-based health aides have the potential to monitor changes in nutritional status among moderately malnourished Malawian children while undergoing HBT using RUTF. Retrospective analysis was performed using the anthropometric data of 1,904 moderately malnourished children during treatment using RUTF. Changes in MUAC and changes in overall weight at 1 and 2 months of treatment were compared. Various geometric relationships were explored between the measures to find the most direct relationship. Models were developed to investigate anthropometric changes in children undergoing treatment. These data reveal that the correlation between the changes in MUAC and changes in weight over the course of treatment is statistically significant ( P  < 0.0001). The relationship between a child’s change in MUAC and their change in weight is influenced by several cofactors related to their initial presentation. The power of change in weight to predict change in MUAC increases at the second month of treatment. Statistical modelling improves if children under the age of 12 months are omitted. Changes in MUAC reflect changes in overall body mass among moderately malnourished children undergoing HBT using RUTF suggesting that performance could possibly be monitored by village health aides in order to monitor a child’s performance on feeding programmes in low resource settings.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 14
content type line 23
ObjectType-Article-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:1092-7875
1573-6628
1573-6628
DOI:10.1007/s10995-010-0569-8