Pollitt E
Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of California, Davis 95616, USA.
J Nutr. 1995 Aug;125(8 Suppl):2272S-2277S. doi: 10.1093/jn/125.suppl_8.2272S.
Most of the correlational and experimental studies that have tested the hypothesis that mild-to-moderate protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) has an adverse effect on cognitive development disregarded the potential confounder effect of micronutrients. This omission may have been a critical flaw in study design because it is now recognized that iron deficiency increases the probability of deviations in the trajectory of children's motor and mental development from a normal developmental path. This paper discusses two frequently cited studies on the effects of PEM on neurointegrative and cognitive development and proposes that neither study can discard the hypothesis that effects attributed to protein and energy deficiency are, instead, determined by iron deficiency.
大多数检验轻度至中度蛋白质-能量营养不良（PEM）对认知发育有不利影响这一假设的相关性研究和实验研究都忽略了微量营养素的潜在混杂效应。这种疏忽可能是研究设计中的一个关键缺陷，因为现在人们认识到缺铁会增加儿童运动和智力发育轨迹偏离正常发育路径的可能性。本文讨论了两项经常被引用的关于PEM对神经整合和认知发育影响的研究，并提出这两项研究都不能排除这样一种假设，即归因于蛋白质和能量缺乏的影响实际上是由缺铁决定的。
