Structural Equation Modeling of Latent Growth Curves of Weight Gain among Treated Tuberculosis Patients

Tuberculosis still remains a major public health problem even though it is treatable and curable. Weight gain measurement during anti tuberculosis (TB) treatment period is an important component to assess the progress of TB patients. In this study, Latent Growth Models (LGMs) were implemented in a longitudinal design to predict the change in weight of TB patients who were given three different regimens under randomized controlled clinical trial for anti-TB treatment. Linear and Quadratic LGMs were fitted using Mplus software. The age, sex and treatment response of the TB patients were used as time invariant independent variables of the growth trajectories. The quadratic trend was found to be better in explaining the changes in weight without grouping than the quadratic model for three group comparisons. A significant increase in the change of weight over time was identified while a significant quadratic effect indicated that weights were sustained over time. The growth rate was similar in both the groups. The treament response had significant association with the growth rate of weight scores of the patients.