From the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA.
Am J Clin Nutr. 2014 Jul;100(1):182-8. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.113.080960. Epub 2014 May 7.
A growing literature has linked early childhood growth to later-life cognition and schooling outcomes in developing countries. Although existing evidence suggests that children's ability to recover from early growth delays in later childhood is limited, longitudinal studies on the persistence and risk of growth faltering beyond age 5 y remain scarce.
Using longitudinal data recently collected from 4 developing countries as part of the Young Lives study, we investigated catch-up growth in children between the ages of 8 and 15 y and the effects of growth during this late-childhood and early-adolescence period on schooling and developmental outcomes.
We analyzed the associations between children's physical growth and development by using longitudinal data from 3327 children aged 8-15 y collected in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam as part of the Young Lives project.
The study yielded 2 main results. First, 36% of children stunted at age 8 y managed to catch up with their peers by age 15 y, and those who caught up had smaller deficits in cognitive scores than did children who remained stunted. Second, physical growth faltering was not restricted to early childhood but rather affected a substantial share of children in the 8-15-y age range, with large negative consequences for cognition and schooling outcomes.
The results from this study suggest that child development in developing countries is a dynamic process offering continued opportunities for children to catch up during adolescence and sustained risks for children to fall behind in their developmental trajectories.
越来越多的文献表明，发展中国家儿童在幼儿期的生长情况与其日后的认知和受教育程度有关。尽管现有证据表明，儿童在后期从早期生长迟缓中恢复的能力有限，但关于 5 岁以后生长迟缓持续存在和风险的纵向研究仍然很少。
利用最近在 4 个发展中国家作为 Young Lives 研究的一部分收集的纵向数据，我们调查了 8 至 15 岁儿童的追赶性生长情况，以及这一晚期儿童和青春期早期的生长对受教育程度和发育结果的影响。
我们使用 Young Lives 项目在埃塞俄比亚、印度、秘鲁和越南收集的 3327 名 8-15 岁儿童的纵向数据，分析了儿童身体生长和发育之间的关联。
该研究得出了 2 个主要结果。首先，36%的 8 岁时生长迟缓的儿童在 15 岁时成功追上同龄人，而那些追上的儿童的认知评分缺陷较小，而那些仍处于生长迟缓的儿童则较大。其次，生长迟缓并不仅限于幼儿期，而是影响了相当一部分 8-15 岁的儿童，对认知和受教育程度产生了很大的负面影响。
本研究结果表明，发展中国家的儿童发育是一个动态的过程，在青春期期间，儿童仍有持续的机会赶上，而在发育轨迹上落后的儿童则持续面临风险。
