Child stunting starts in utero: Growth trajectories and determinants in Ugandan infants.

ABSTRACT: Childhood stunting remains a public health burden worldwide. Although many studies have examined early life and in-utero risk factors; most have been observational and have used analytic techniques that make inferences limited to population means, thereby obscuring important within-group variations. This study addressed that important gap. Using data from a birth cohort of Ugandan infants (n = 4528), we applied group-based trajectory modelling to assess diverse patterns of growth among children from birth to 1-year old. A multinomial regression model was conducted to understand the relationship between risk factors and observed patterns across groups. We found that the onset of stunting occurred before birth and followed four distinct growth patterns: chronically stunted (Group 1), recover

SUBMITTER: Namirembe G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9218325 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature