International Journal of Child Health and Nutrition

97-101

Authors: Andrew S. Day, Vesal Moeeni, Tony Walls

Background: Although it is widely acknowledged that hospitalized children are at greater risk of malnutrition, the available paediatric Nutritional Risk Screening (NRS) tools have not yet become universally used to identify those children at greater risk. Furthermore, the utility of one NRS tool over another remains unclear. Materials and Methods:The utility of a recently developed tool, the Paediatric Nutritional Screening Tool (PNST), was evaluated using data previously collected in the assessment of three other NRS tools in 281 children from Iran and New Zealand. The sensitivity and specificity of each tool was then assessed based on the WHO criteria for malnutrition. Results: The PNST recognized about half of the malnourished patients while the other three tools identified at least 85% of these children. The sensitivity of PNST for moderate (BMI-z < 2) and severe malnutrition (BMI-z <-3) was 37% and 46% respectively, while the sensitivity for other three NRS tools ranged from 82-100%. Conclusion: In this data set, the PNST tool did not perform as well as the three more established NRS tools. Further work is required to provide optimal tools for the identification of hospitalized children at risk of malnutrition

109-114

Authors: Fatih Kara, Serap Bati

Background and Aim: Every year in the world millions of children die from malnutrition and infectious diseases. Children under the age of five are affected more quickly than other age groups from negative conditions. This study is aimed to determine the risk factors of malnutrition and incidence of malnutrition in children aged 1-4 years living in Konya.Materials and Methods: This is a cross-sectional epidemiological study. The survey about demographical information about the child and their family, child's nutrition and anthropometric measurements described by both Z-scoring and GOMEZ classification, was conducted between May-December,2016 with 1000 children aged 1-4 years in Konya province. Descriptive statistics, chi-square test, student t-test and multivariate logistic regression were performed by SPSS 18.0 considering p<0.05 as statistically significant.Results:According to the GOMEZ classification, 18.7% of children living in Konya are malnourished. According to Z-score, 3.5% (n=35) of the children were found to be underweight and 7.2% (n=72) were found as stunted. Factors affecting the malnutrition were the age range of children, the working status of the mother, the kinship status between the parents, the number of living children, maternal age, birth weight, the duration of breastfeeding, the time spent on TV/computer, the attitude and anxiety level of the mother when her child does not eat and the mother's nutrition education.Conclusion:Malnutrition is a common problem and its rate is high in Konya.It is suggested that health professionals should educate the society, especially mothers by organizing various training meetings. Moreover, it can be emphasized that health planners should prepare a program to determine malnourished children considering the risk factors of malnutrition in health screens and first step medical centers

122-131

Authors: Tasmiah Sad Sutopa, Wasimul Bari

Background:To explore non-linear effects of continuous covariates on response variable, generalized additive model (GAM) has now been extensively used. The main aim of this study is to explore the non-linear effect of some selected continuous covariates on malnutrition status of children in Bangladesh using logistic additive model.Methods: To determine the factors of malnutrition status of children in Bangladesh, data are excluded from Bangladesh Demographic and Health survey 2014 (BDHS 2014). The anthropometric index of nutrition status, stunting is used as binary response variable and several demographic, socio-economic and health related variables are used as covariates. Bivariate analysis and additive logistic regression model is used to uncover the non-linear effect of included continuous variables as well as effect of categorical covariates on stunting in the study.Results:The analysis exposes that mother’s current age, mother’s BMI and child’s age have significant non-linear impact on stunting of children. Conclusion: The analysis suggests that to improve nutrition status of children in Bangladesh, the government should take necessary steps targeting women in higher and lower age groups and women with higher and lower BMI. Moreover, the children after 20 months should be properly taken care of for achieving better nutritional health.