Association between Non-Typhoidal Salmonella Infection and Growth in Children under 5 Years of Age: Analyzing Data from the Global Enteric Multicenter Study

Non-typhoidal Salmonella (NTS) is one of the less focused on infections and is often associated with faulty child nutrition in the developing world. This study aimed to evaluate the association of NTS infection with growth faltering among children under the age of five. We analyzed data from 378 fecal NTS positive children with both moderate-to-severe diarrhea (MSD) and asymptomatic infection from the seven countries of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa during enrolment and on day 60 follow up in the Global Enteric Multicenter Study (GEMS) for the period of December 2007 to March 2011. Children not associated with fecal NTS (n = 1134) were randomly selected from the same dataset (1:3 ratio) as a comparison group. The association between an explanatory variable and the outcome variable was longitudinally tested using generalized estimating equations (GEE), where the dependent variables were height-for-age (HAZ), weight-for-age (WAZ), and weight-for-height (WHZ) z-score, and the independent variable was the presence of fecal NTS. The GEE multivariable model identified a negative association between fecal NTS and WAZ (coefficient: −0.19; 95% CI (confidence interval): −0.33, −0.04, and p value = 0.010), WHZ (coef: −0.19; 95% CI: −0.34, −0.05, and p value = 0.007), and HAZ (coef: −0.13; 95% CI: −0.27, −0.01, and p value = 0.073) after adjusting for age, gender, diarrhea, breastfeeding status, mothers’ education, number of children under the age of five, household size by the number of people regularly sleep at the home, handwashing practice, source of drinking water, wealth index, presence of co-pathogens, comorbidity, and study sites. In the GEMS, where children were followed during 50–90 days of enrolment, the presence of fecal NTS harmed the child’s anthropometric outcomes. Minimizing potential exposure to NTS is needed to curb worsening child undernutrition.