Variability of basic anthropometric indicators in children aged 12-59 months with different frequency of acute respiratory infections in their medical history

Abstract

Aim - to determine the state of interdependence between the frequency of acute respiratory infections (ARI) episodes in children aged 12-59 months and basic indicators of their physical development. Materials and methods. A total of 136 children (68 boys and 68 girls) aged 12-59 months, undergoing inpatient treatment on ARI, were involved in the clinical study. The number of ARI episodes during the previous year of their life was taken into account. Additionally, two integral indices of ARI recurrence, specifically the infection index (InI) and resistance index (RI), were calculated. The basic indicators of physical development were assessed in the children, including: 1) body weight (BW); 2) body length (BL); 3) body surface area (BSA); 4) body mass index; 5) chest circumference; 6) integral index of dolichostenomelia. For the comparative analysis of the results obtained, the current standards of physical development indicators for children from the World Health Organization were used. The statistical processing of the digital data was performed with IBM SPSS Statistics 28 licensed software. Results. In the examined children, InI was inversely and moderately correlated with BW, BL, BSA, and chest circumference. According to this correlation, higher InI was combined with lower physical development indicators. On the contrary, a direct and weakly expressed interdependence with BW, BL, and BSA was found for RI. It was confirmed by registration of bigger RI against the background of higher anthropometric parameters. A cross-tabulation demonstrated a moderate relationship between the frequency of ARI episodes, on the one hand, and the considered centile intervals for BL (φc=0.362; p=0.037) as well as the Z-intervals for the integral anthropometric parameter - BL/child’s age (φc=0.348; p=0.006), on the other hand. Conclusions. A linear regression analysis carried out in the children demonstrates the dependence of the frequency of ARI episodes only on their age. At that, none of the studied anthropometric indicators is represented in the resulting prognostic model. The absence of these indicators in the model obtained may be explained, firstly, by the small number of the examined patients, whose BW and BL belonged to 2 extreme centile intervals: 3-5% and 95-97%. Secondly, it is likely that the further study of the relationship between the frequency of ARI episodes and physical development indicators would be more advisable to undertake in children groups with narrower age ranges. The study was conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. The study protocol was approved by the local ethics committees of the institutions mentioned in the paper. An informed parental consent was obtained for the study in children. No conflict of interests was declared by the authors.