Impacts of dietary intake and helminth infection on diversity in growth among schoolchildren in rural south China: A four‐year longitudinal study

Abstract

The authors carried out six transverse anthropometric, dietary, and parasitological surveys of 274 schoolchildren (138 boys and 136 girls), aged 10-12 years (in 2001), from the Dongting Lake region in rural South China from 2001 to 2005 to examine intra-population differences in growth. Compared to the Chinese references, the subject children were judged to be retarded in growth at the population level. Comparisons among tertiles classified by the extents of change in weight-for-age Z score from the first to the last survey revealed significant effects of dietary intakes and parasite infections. In particular, there were two observations for the high-tertile boys and girls, whose Z scores of height-for-age, weight-for-age and BMI-for-age in higher ages were similar to, or higher than, the Chinese references. First, their energy intakes were larger than those of mid- and low-tertile boys and girls but were only 80-88% of the recommended dietary allowances for Chinese. Second, they were characterized by high prevalence of Schistosoma japonicum at the first survey but nil from the second survey. In conclusion, there is a high possibility that the children, who are recognized as undernourished at the population level, are able to attain the Chinese standards by increase of energy intake to the level of 10% lower than the recommended allowance for Chinese and eradication of S. japonicum.

Mixed‐longitudinal growth of Karimojong girls and boys in Moroto District, Uganda

“…Throughout their childhood growth period, Karimojong boys and girls in this sample became progressively smaller (shorter and lighter) and thinner relative to the NCHS references. They were small as well by comparison with children in other countries in the global south (Adair, 2007;Eveleth and Tanner, 1990;Garnier et al, 2005;Zhou et al, 2007), including nomadic Turkana children (Campbell et al, 2005b;Gray et al, 2004). Their changes in fat stores assumed a similar pattern to that documented for South African children by Cameron et al (1992), but Karimojong children were thinner.…”

Effect of deworming on school-aged children’s physical fitness, cognition and clinical parameters in a malaria-helminth co-endemic area of Côte d’Ivoire

“…We identified a higher weight gain in girls compared to boys, and in moderate- to heavy-intensity S. mansoni -infected individuals. Several other studies showed benefits on growth catch-up after deworming in chronic schistosomiasis [56, 57]. Yet, interpretation of effects on growth can be complex considering that there are two types of catch-up growth.…”

Schistosoma mansoni Morbidity among School-Aged Children: A SCORE Project in Kenya

“…Though both stunting and wasting were prevalent in our study, we did not find the associations with schistosomiasis that other investigators have shown. [50][51][52] Our inability to reproduce the association is likely caused by residual confounding from unmeasured variables. The overwhelming support from other studies argues that anthropometry should remain in the toolkit for morbidity assessments.…”