Background: Appropriate assessment of nutritional status of adolescents as a population group is an important area of focus, considering the age of culminating growth, the size of the age group, the changing nutrition patterns, and as a window of opportunity for corrections before adulthood sets in. Nutritional status is now recognized to be a prime indicator of the health of individuals. The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes the importance of employing age- and sex-specific reference values (body mass index-for-age Z scores {BAZ} scores) for nutritional assessment in this age group.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMJ Paediatr Open
February 2024
Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has offset some of the gains achieved in global health, particularly in relation to maternal, child health and nutrition. As pregnancy is a period of plasticity where insults acting on maternal environment have far-reaching consequences, the pandemic has had a significant impact on prenatal outcomes, intrauterine and postnatal development of infants. This research will investigate both the direct and indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic during pregnancy on prenatal outcomes, growth and development in early childhood.
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February 2024
Introduction: Evidence on the impact of nutrient-rich animal source foods such as eggs for improving child growth and cognition is inconsistent. This study aims to examine the impact of an egg intervention in children, along with behaviour change communication (BCC) to the mother, on linear growth and cognition, and nutritional status in children aged 9-18 months.
Methods And Analysis: A 9-month open-labelled randomised controlled trial will be conducted in three urban slums in Hyderabad, India, as a substudy of an observational cohort study (n=350) following pregnant women and their children until 18 months of age in a population at risk of stunting.