Body Composition (Unhealthy Fat Mass %) Was Associated With Stunting In Supposedly Healthy Children Aged 3-5 Years Old In Ndola, Zambia

Full text: Introduction: The prevalence of stunting in children under five years in the world stands at 33% and in Zambia is at 40%. Prolonged undernutrition during gestation and extending into early childhood is common in developing countries and causes stunting. Consequences of impaired growth, cognitive delays, greater susceptibility to infections and high risk of mortality. Stunted children have different Body composition structure compared to normal children particularly lean mass. In Zambia there is scanty information on body composition and therefore this study was designed to assess body composition in stunted children compared to normal children without malaria and other infections in the preceding one week. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study in which children aged 3-5 years were recruited at Nkwazi clinic in Ndola. Children's weight, height, Haemoglobin and Malaria were measured. Saliva collected was analysed for body composition to determine fat mass (FM) and fat-free mass (FFM) using deuterium dilution technique by Fourier transformed infrared (FTIR). Results: A total of 116 children were recruited and 104 had analysable data. About 54.2% were males and the average age was 48 months. Stunting, underweight and wasting levels were found to be 36.6%, 23.8% and 4.9% respectively. Overall 40.4% of the children had healthy body fat (36.2% of girls and 43.8% of boys). Of the children with unhealthy body fat, 14.4% had lower than healthy and 45.2% had higher unhealthy body fat. Logistic regression was done with FM% as the dependant variable against Gender, Stunting and Underweight. Stunting was found to be statistically significant against FM% (P=0.011) and not others. Discussion/Conclusion: Stunted children with unhealthy Fat Mass percentage were found to be significantly higher compared to the children who were not stunted (P=0.011). This should trigger further investigations in these children to counter future complications that can arise as a result of this amount of fat. The other variables such as malaria illness in the previous 1 month, age and gender were not statistically significant (P>0.05). The study was successfully implemented with use of deuterium water to assess body composition of children under the age of five years and that this can serve as baseline data for subsequent studies in this and other age groups. (author)