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Aim: This paper aimed to analyse the association between small for size at birth, stunting, recovery from stunting and pubertal development in a rural Bangladeshi cohort.Methods: The participants were 994 girls and 987 boys whose mothers participated in the Maternal and Infant Nutrition Interventions in Matlab trial. The birth cohort was followed from birth to puberty 2001-2017. Pubertal development according to Tanner was self-assessed. Age at menarche was determined and in boys, consecutive height measurements were used to ascertain whether pubertal growth spurt had started. The exposures and outcomes were modelled by Cox's proportional hazards analyses and logistic regression.Results: There was no difference in age at menarche between girls that were small or appropriate for gestational age at birth. Boys born small for gestational age entered their pubertal growth spurt later than those with appropriate weight. Children who were stunted had later pubertal development, age at menarche and onset of growth spurt than non-stunted children. Children who recovered from infant or early childhood stunting had similar pubertal development as non-stunted children.Conclusion: Infant and childhood stunting was associated with a later pubertal development. Recovery from stunting was not associated with earlier puberty in comparison with non-stunted children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: A previous maternal and infant nutrition intervention in rural Matlab, Bangladesh, showed that prenatal nutrient supplements improved child survival, but had no effect on size at birth. This secondary analysis examined whether prenatal multiple micronutrient supplements (MMS), on their own or combined with an early invitation to receive prenatal food supplements, affected child morbidity.Methods: This randomised trial enrolled 4436 pregnant women from November 2001 to October 2003 and allocated them to early or standard invitations to food supplements, in the ninth and 20th weeks of pregnancy, respectively, and supplements of either the standard 60 mg iron with 400 μg folic acid, 30 mg iron with 400 μg folic acid or MMS. Quasi-Poisson regression was used to analyse morbidity.Results: There were 3560 single live births and 3516 had morbidity data. The incidence rates of fever, diarrhoea and acute lower respiratory tract infection were 15.3, 3.6 and 2.3 episodes per person-year, respectively. The separate or combined interventions had no effect on morbidity up to 24 months.Conclusion: Early invitations to prenatal food supplements or prenatal MMS had no effect on common infections in rural Bangladesh, suggesting that earlier findings on improved child survival were not mediated by an effect on child morbidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]