Wells, JCK;
(2019)
Body composition of children with moderate and severe undernutrition and after treatment: a narrative review.
BMC Medicine
, 17
(1)
, Article 215. 10.1186/s12916-019-1465-8.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: Until recently, undernourished children were usually assessed using simple anthropometric measurements, which provide global assessments of nutritional status. There is increasing interest in obtaining more direct data on body composition to assess the effects of undernutrition on fat-free mass (FFM) and its constituents, such as muscle and organs, and on fat mass (FM) and its regional distribution. MAIN TEXT: Recent studies show that severe-acute undernutrition, categorised as 'wasting', is associated with major deficits in both FFM and FM that may persist in the long-term. Fat distribution appears more central, but this is more associated with the loss of peripheral fat than with the elevation of central fat. Chronic undernutrition, categorised as 'stunting', is associated with deficits in FFM and in specific components, such as organ size. However, the magnitude of these deficits is reduced, or - in some cases - disappears, after adjustment for height. This suggests that FFM is largely reduced in proportion to linear growth. Stunted children vary in their FM - in some cases remaining thin throughout childhood, but in other cases developing higher levels of FM. The causes of this heterogeneity remain unclear. Several different pathways may underlie longitudinal associations between early stunting and later body composition. Importantly, recent studies suggest that short children are not at risk of excess fat deposition in the short term when given nutritional supplementation. CONCLUSION: The short- and long-term functional significance of FFM and FM for survival, physical capacity and non-communicable disease risk means that both tissues merit further attention in research on child undernutrition.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Body composition of children with moderate and severe undernutrition and after treatment: a narrative review |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s12916-019-1465-8 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-019-1465-8 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
| Keywords: | Body composition, Child undernutrition, Stunting, Undernutrition, Wasting |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Population, Policy and Practice Dept |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10086987 |
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