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Child Growth Curves in High-Altitude Ladakh: Results from a Cohort Study

High prevalence of child underweight and stunting in high-altitude areas has often been reported. However, most previous studies on this topic were cross-sectional. Another critical concern is that using the World Health Organization (WHO) Child Growth Standards to evaluate child growth in high-alti...

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Autores principales: Yang, Wen-Chien, Fu, Chun-Min, Su, Bo-Wei, Ouyang, Chung-Mei, Yang, Kuen-Cheh
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7277569/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32455978
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17103652
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author Yang, Wen-Chien
Fu, Chun-Min
Su, Bo-Wei
Ouyang, Chung-Mei
Yang, Kuen-Cheh
author_facet Yang, Wen-Chien
Fu, Chun-Min
Su, Bo-Wei
Ouyang, Chung-Mei
Yang, Kuen-Cheh
author_sort Yang, Wen-Chien
collection PubMed
description High prevalence of child underweight and stunting in high-altitude areas has often been reported. However, most previous studies on this topic were cross-sectional. Another critical concern is that using the World Health Organization (WHO) Child Growth Standards to evaluate child growth in high-altitude areas may lead to overestimations of underweight and stunting. Our study aimed to evaluate the long-term growth pattern of children (3 to 18 years) above the altitude of 3500 m in Ladakh, India. The participants’ body weight (BW), body height (BH), and body mass index (BMI) were measured annually according to the WHO Child Growth Standards for children under 5 years old and the WHO reference data for children aged 5 to 19 years. The generalized estimating equation (GEE) was used to estimate the means and z-scores of BW, BH, and BMI at different ages. A total of 401 children were enrolled from 2012 to 2018. Their mean z-scores of BW, BH, and BMI were −1.47, −1.44, and −0.85 in 2012 and increased to −0.74, −0.92, and −0.63 in 2018. This population’s specific growth curve was also depicted, which generally fell below the 85th percentile of the WHO standards. This is the first cohort study about long-term child growth patterns in a high-altitude area. The detailed underlying mechanisms of our findings need future research on more representative data of high-altitude populations.
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spelling pubmed-72775692020-06-12 Child Growth Curves in High-Altitude Ladakh: Results from a Cohort Study Yang, Wen-Chien Fu, Chun-Min Su, Bo-Wei Ouyang, Chung-Mei Yang, Kuen-Cheh Int J Environ Res Public Health Article High prevalence of child underweight and stunting in high-altitude areas has often been reported. However, most previous studies on this topic were cross-sectional. Another critical concern is that using the World Health Organization (WHO) Child Growth Standards to evaluate child growth in high-altitude areas may lead to overestimations of underweight and stunting. Our study aimed to evaluate the long-term growth pattern of children (3 to 18 years) above the altitude of 3500 m in Ladakh, India. The participants’ body weight (BW), body height (BH), and body mass index (BMI) were measured annually according to the WHO Child Growth Standards for children under 5 years old and the WHO reference data for children aged 5 to 19 years. The generalized estimating equation (GEE) was used to estimate the means and z-scores of BW, BH, and BMI at different ages. A total of 401 children were enrolled from 2012 to 2018. Their mean z-scores of BW, BH, and BMI were −1.47, −1.44, and −0.85 in 2012 and increased to −0.74, −0.92, and −0.63 in 2018. This population’s specific growth curve was also depicted, which generally fell below the 85th percentile of the WHO standards. This is the first cohort study about long-term child growth patterns in a high-altitude area. The detailed underlying mechanisms of our findings need future research on more representative data of high-altitude populations. MDPI 2020-05-22 2020-05 /pmc/articles/PMC7277569/ /pubmed/32455978 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17103652 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Yang, Wen-Chien
Fu, Chun-Min
Su, Bo-Wei
Ouyang, Chung-Mei
Yang, Kuen-Cheh
Child Growth Curves in High-Altitude Ladakh: Results from a Cohort Study
title Child Growth Curves in High-Altitude Ladakh: Results from a Cohort Study
title_full Child Growth Curves in High-Altitude Ladakh: Results from a Cohort Study
title_fullStr Child Growth Curves in High-Altitude Ladakh: Results from a Cohort Study
title_full_unstemmed Child Growth Curves in High-Altitude Ladakh: Results from a Cohort Study
title_short Child Growth Curves in High-Altitude Ladakh: Results from a Cohort Study
title_sort child growth curves in high-altitude ladakh: results from a cohort study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7277569/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32455978
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17103652
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