Functional principal component analysis for identifying multivariate patterns and archetypes of growth, and their association with long-term cognitive development

For longitudinal studies with multivariate observations, we propose statistical methods to identify clusters of archetypal subjects by using techniques from functional data analysis and to relate longitudinal patterns to outcomes. We demonstrate how this approach can be applied to examine associations between multiple time-varying exposures and subsequent health outcomes, where the former are recorded sparsely and irregularly in time, with emphasis on the utility of multiple longitudinal observations in the framework of dimension reduction techniques. In applications to children’s growth data, we investigate archetypes of infant growth patterns and identify subgroups that are related to cognitive development in childhood. Specifically, “Stunting” and “Faltering” time-dynamic patterns of head circumference, body length and weight in the first 12 months are associated with lower levels of long-term cognitive development in comparison to “Generally Large” and “Catch-up” growth. Our findings provide evidence for the statistical association between multivariate growth patterns in infancy and long-term cognitive development.