Severe acute malnutrition morphological patterns in children under five

Abstract

Abstract Current methods for infant and child nutritional assessment rely on anthropometric measurements, whose implementation faces technical challenges in low- and middle-income countries. Anthropometry is also limited to linear measurements, ignoring important body shape information related to health. This work proposes the use of 2D geometric morphometric techniques applied to a sample of Senegalese participants aged 6–59 months with an optimal nutritional condition or with severe acute malnutrition to address morphometric variations due to nutritional status. Significant differences in shape and size body changes were described according to nutritional status, resulting age, sex and allometric effect crucial factors to establish nutritional morphological patterns. The constructed discriminant functions exhibited the best classification rates in the left arm. A landmark-based template registering body shape could be useful to both assess acute malnutrition and better understand the morphological patterns that nutritional status promotes in children during their first 5 years of growth and development.