الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Children with cerebral palsy are generally undernourished and growth retarded than normal children. Malnutrition is due to poor nutritional status as well as non nutritional factors including negative neurotropic effects and indirect factors such as immobility, endocrinological abnormalities, spasticity (Yakut et al., 2006), with oral motor dysfunction being a major contributing factor (Pai et al., 2001). From a clinical and research standpoint, there has been increasing effort to identify undernourished children and determine appropriate intervention. Thus, our aim was to determine the pattern of growth and body composition in a group of prepubertal children with cerebral palsy.This was a cross sectional study, in which forty children with CP aged 2 to 8 years, on mono or no antiepileptic drug therapy recruited from Ain-Shams Outpatient Neurology Clinic over a 6 months period, and classified according to the Gross Motor Function classification system, and were compared with forty age, sex and socioeconomic class matched healthy controls. Consents were obtained from children’s parents, and they were subjected to a full history taking, and a full clinical examination, stressing on neurological examination, anthropometric measurements including weight, height (if possible), knee height, head circumference, mid-upper arm circumference (MAC), waist and hip circumferences, triceps and subscapular skin fold thicknesses. Using Bioelectrical Impedence technique’s equations (BIA), the values of: Total body water (TBW), Fat Mass (FM), Fat Free Mass (FFM), Fat %, and Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) were obtained. The following laboratory tests were performed : Complete blood count (CBC), serum ferritin, serum total proteins and albumin, and serum Leptin. |