Monthly measurement of child lengths between 6 and 27 months of age in Burkina Faso reveals both chronic and episodic growth faltering

BACKGROUND: Linear growth faltering is determined primarily by attained heights in infancy, but available data consist mainly of cross-sectional heights at each age. OBJECTIVES: This study used longitudinal data to test whether faltering occurs episodically in a few months of very low growth, which could potentially be prevented by timely intervention, or is a chronic condition with slower growth in every month of infancy and early childhood. METHODS: Using anthropometric data collected monthly between August 2014 and December 2016, we investigated individual growth curves of 5039 children ages 6–27 mo in Burkina Faso (108,580 observations). We evaluated growth-curve smoothness by level of attained length at ∼27 mo by analyzing variation in changes in monthly growth rates and using 2-stage regressions: 1) regressing each child's length on their age and extracting R(2) to represent curve smoothness, initial length, and average velocity by age; and 2) regressing extracted parameters on individual-level attained length. RESULTS: Short children started smaller and remained on their initial trajectories, continuously growing slower than taller children. Growth between 9 and 11 mo was the most influential on attained length; for each 1-cm/mo increase in growth velocity during this period, attained length increased by 6.71 cm (95% CI: 6.59, 6.83 cm). Furthermore, a 0.01 increase in R(2) from individual regression of length on age was associated with a 3.10-cm higher attained length (95% CI: 2.80, 3.41 cm), and having 2 consecutive months of slow growth (<15(th) centile relative to the sample) was associated with 1.7-cm lower attained length (95% CI: −1.80, −1.59 cm), with larger effects in younger children, suggesting that smoother growth patterns were also associated with higher attained length. CONCLUSIONS: Children who experience extreme growth faltering are likely less resilient to systematic growth-limiting conditions as well as episodic insults to their growth. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT02071563.