[Research advance in assessment of nutritional status of children]

Malnutrition is not a simple disease, which occurs in the condition when the body does not get the right amount of nutrients to maintain healthy tissues and organ functions. Malnutrition generally refers both to undernutrition and overnutrition, but usually it is used to refer solely to a deficiency of nutrition. Infants and young children are the most vulnerable because of their high nutritional requirements for growth and development. Growth is an important indicator of health and nutritional status of a child. Generally, underweight, studding and wasting are used as the indicators of malnutrition. In fact, a gain in height is a better indicator of the adequacy of a diet than a gain in weight. Rates of weight gain needs to accompany accelerated height gain to maintain normal body proportions (weight-for-height). Now therefore WHO recommends using weight-for-height as the indicator of malnutrition of epidemic intensity in communities and of nutritional condition evaluation, including treatment assessment. The assessment of nutritional status is commonly summarized by the mnemonic "ABCD," which stands for anthropometric measurement (A), biochemical or laboratory tests (B), clinical indicators (C) and dietary assessment (D). Children with malnutrition are required to ingest more than 30 essential nutrients including both functional, protective nutrients (type I) and growth nutrients (type II), in order to have a catch-up growth in weight and height.