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The Stunting Tool for Early Prevention: development and external validation of a novel tool to predict risk of stunting in children at 3 years of age

The Stunting Tool for Early Prevention: development and external validation of a novel tool to predict risk of stunting in children at 3 years of age

Authors :
Sabine Braat
Sarah Hanieh
Julie A Simpson
Tran Thi Thu Ha
Thach D Tran
Tran Tuan
Jane Fisher
Beverley-Ann Biggs
Source :
BMJ Global Health, Vol 4, Iss 6 (2019)
Publication Year :
2019
Publisher :
BMJ Publishing Group, 2019.

Abstract

Introduction Globally, an estimated 151 million children under 5 years of age still suffer from the adverse effects of stunting. We sought to develop and externally validate an early life predictive model that could be applied in infancy to accurately predict risk of stunting in preschool children.Methods We conducted two separate prospective cohort studies in Vietnam that intensively monitored children from early pregnancy until 3 years of age. They included 1168 and 475 live-born infants for model development and validation, respectively. Logistic regression on child stunting at 3 years of age was performed for model development, and the predicted probabilities for stunting were used to evaluate the performance of this model in the validation data set.Results Stunting prevalence was 16.9% (172 of 1015) in the development data set and 16.4% (70 of 426) in the validation data set. Key predictors included in the final model were paternal and maternal height, maternal weekly weight gain during pregnancy, infant sex, gestational age at birth, and infant weight and length at 6 months of age. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve in the validation data set was 0.85 (95% Confidence Interval, 0.80–0.90).Conclusion This tool applied to infants at 6 months of age provided valid prediction of risk of stunting at 3 years of age using a readily available set of parental and infant measures. Further research is required to examine the impact of preventive measures introduced at 6 months of age on those identified as being at risk of growth faltering at 3 years of age.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
20190018 and 20597908
Volume :
4
Issue :
6
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
BMJ Global Health
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.b9dc3e5d3cd0470f963516d3ea9c5bfc
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2019-001801