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

Abstract

In this article we examine results of a mixed-longitudinal study of child and adolescent growth among agropastoral Karimojong children in Moroto District, northeast Uganda. During a 5-month period from August to December, 2004, longitudinal data were collected for a mixed sample of 104 Karimojong children, aged from birth to 18 years. During a previous study in 1998-1999,we had measured 26 of these children who then ranged in Age between 3 months and 7 years. Most of the children were small and thin relative to accepted growth standards, and prevalence of stunting and wasting in childhood was high. In the period from the end of childhood through adolescence, however, Karimojong girls showed marked variability in annual growth, with some attaining a large adult size relative to what we predicted based on their poor childhood growth. Developmental, evolutionary, and environmental determinants are considered. We conclude that growth of these children reflects exposure to environmental insults that vary unpredictably within relatively short intervals. Variability in the magnitude and timing of these insults among children from different birth-cohorts is probably sufficient to account for so-called "shifting" of growth percentiles in childhood and adolescence in this mixed sample.

Obesity and blood pressure levels of adolescents in Abeokuta, Nigeria

“…However, even though the mean BMI in this study was as low as 17.1 kg/m 2 , as much as 25.8% of the children had centrally accumulated fat. This is similar to the findings in the Karimojong children of Uganda26 and middle-aged Indians,27 and is a characteristic feature of populations with chronic malnutrition. This phenomenon, coupled with adaptation to western lifestyles, could explain the rise in prevalence of non-communicable diseases such as hypertension and diabetes mellitus in these populations.…”

Longitudinal weight gain of immunized infants and toddlers in Moroto District, Uganda (Karamoja subregion)

“…The pattern we describe here of deteriorating weight status relative to the WHO standard conforms to results from earlier studies (Gray et al, 2004(Gray et al, , 2008 but in this sample, deceleration in weight velocity began as early as the third month. We attribute the earlier appearance of the loss of velocity to shorter intervals between longitudinal measurements as well as to larger sample sizes in each age class from birth to 6 months (cf.…”

“…Although delayed growth in stature and low weight-for-height during most of the growth period have been reported for other pastoralist populations in sub-Saharan Africa (Benefice et al, 1984;Cameron, 1997;Eveleth and Tanner, 1990;Hiernaux, 1964;Little et al, 1983Little et al, , 1993Orr and Gilks, 1931;Pennington, 2002;Petit-Maire-Heintz, 1962;Roberts and Bainbridge, 1963;Sellen 1999a,b), we proposed that increasing height and weight deficits of Karimojong children in recent decades may reflect heightened environmental stress, which overwhelms children's capacity to mount an adaptive response. As evidence in support of this hypothesis, we pointed to delayed growth in head circumference in infancy and early childhood in the Karimojong sample (Gray et al, 2008), an anthropometric character that correlates strongly with brain growth and development (Lohman et al, 1988;Van Ijzendorn et al, 2007). In our most recent study, however, which examines mixed-longitudinal growth of children in middle childhood and adolescence, we suggested that the pattern of growth and the timing of life history transitions in this population may vary substantially between closely spaced birth cohorts )-an effect of extreme fluctuations in environmental conditions over intervals of intermediate length.…”

“…The loess procedure preserves a greater degree of the variability in the model than other regression methods but eliminates extreme fluctuations in mean values associated with small sample sizes. The loess method has been described at length elsewhere (Gray et al, 2008. See also Walker et al (2006).…”

“…The investigation of child growth is part of an ongoing study of the impact of deteriorating social and environmental conditions on human adaptability in this population (Gray et al, 2003). Previously, we have described the pattern of growth in infancy (Gray et al, 2008) and childhood ) of a sample of Karimojong children who were measured between 1998 and 2004. We reported that children were both short and thin relative to international growth standards, and we found a higher incidence of both stunting and wasting in comparison with Karimojong children who were measured in the 1960s (Gray et al, 2003;Jelliffe et al, 1964;Rutishauser and Whitehead, 1969).…”