Weight gain among children under five with severe malnutrition in therapeutic feeding programmes: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Globally, some 45 million children under five years of age are wasted (low weight-for-height). Although 2023 World Health Organisation guidelines on their care did not aim to identify optimal weight gain, they did mention 5-10 g/kg/day as a target, which is a change from prior guidelines that recommended 10-15 g/kg/day, when inpatient-only care was the norm. We aimed to inform future policy/programming on weight gain targets.

Methods

For this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched Embase, Global Health and Medline. The final search was on 23/02/2024. Papers were included if they reported weight gain of children aged 6-59 months with severe malnutrition during inpatient (facility-based), outpatient (home-based), and hybrid treatment (initially inpatient a

SUBMITTER: O'Donovan G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11872456 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature