Peso ao nascer: influÃncia na nutriÃÃo e no crescimento infantil

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2007

RESUMO

This thesis intends to answer to the following questions: a) What is the impact that nutrition exerts on the linear growth? b) Which are the patterns and how to evaluate the linear growth? c) What is the influence of birth weight on weight and length gains among children under 18 months of age? d) What are the difference of the strength of the association between the socioeconomic factors, birth weight and the nutritional status when the nutritional risk is evaluated trough indices that represent different processes of nutritional damage? To answer these questions three papers had been elaborated. The first one consists of a literature review on the patterns of linear growth and its assessment that allowed the understanding of this process and its evaluation as well as the importance of the nutrition in this explaining model. The other questions have its answers in the two empirical studies that compose the second and the third papers. For these studies it was used a dataset of a research carried out in the urban areas of four cities of Southern Forest Zone of the State of Pernambuco from children recruited at birth from September 1997 to August 1998 and followed from birth to 18 months of age. The second article had the objective of analyzing the weight and length gains among children followed from birth to 18 months of age, distributed according to sex and birth weight. The results allow to conclude that the length and weight curves had been ascending in the three analyzed birth weight categories and that through the weight-for-age curve, the linear physical growth throughout the 18 months of life, can be inferred. The third article is a nested case-control study within a cohort. The objective of this study was to analyze the association between the socioeconomic factors, birth weight and the nutritional status at the end of the 18 months of age. The nutritional risk was evaluated according to indexes weight-for-age and length-for-age, in an independent way. Hierarchical logistic regression analysis was used to investigate determinant factors for nutritional status at 18 months of age and its results had lead to the conclusion that the environment conditions, length and birth weight are predictors of the nutritional status at 18 months of age. This thesis reinforces the value of an appropriate growth monitoring as a routine on infant health. It shows that follow-up of the physical growth of children born at full term up to18 months of age, can be done by considering mean weight gains. It corroborates the role played for the socioeconomic factors on nutritional status and, consequently, on child growth. It stands out that adequate dietary and health advice for children born with insufficient or low birth weight has to be envisaged in accordance with their growth patterns, especially for those living in socially deprived communities

ASSUNTO(S)

lactente â crescimento - estudo longitudinal recÃm-nascido â nutriÃÃo - crescimento lactente â nutriÃÃo â fatores de risco nutricao

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