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Growth of Abused Children

Contrasted with the Non-abused in an Urban Poor Community

Department of Family Practice, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey

Theresa O. Scholl, PhD

Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, School of Osteopathic Medicine

Edmund Decker, DO

Department of Family Practice, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey

Eileen Ebert, DO

Department of Family Practice, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey

While the identification of a growth-retarded or otherwise undernourished child suggests a diagnosis of child abuse or neglect, it is not certain that abused children from poor communities are less well nourished than children living in similar environments. The setting of this study -day care centers in an urban poor city—provided an opportunity to make this comparison with appropriate community-based controls.

Measures of height, weight, and weight/height² (Body Mass Index (BMI)) were compared for 196 children, 2 to 6 years of age, 53 of whom were victims of physical abuse. The data was adjusted for age, sex, and ethnicity using logistic regression analysis to determine occurence of wasting (weight for height <5th percentile) and stunting (height for age <5th percentile). Significantly more abused children (16.3%) showed wasting as compared to non-abused (0.7%) with abused children 16.6 times more likely to show wasting than non-abused (95% confidence limits on the Odds Ratio 1.9-145.0). While 11.6 percent of abused children showed stunting compared to 5.6 percent of non-abused, this difference was not significant when the data was adjusted for demographic factors. The BMI (15.02 kg/m²) for abused children was significantly less than that (15.9 kg/m²) for non-abused children (F = 8.11; p = 0.0049).

In the present study, significant wasting as seen in acute malnutrition was found among abused children at diagnosis, suggesting that within an urban poor community the growth of children so identified does differ from the growth of children who are not abused.

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