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Body composition in children with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy
V A Stallings1, C E Cronk, B S Zemel
1Division of Gastroenterology, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, USA.
Objective:
To determine the pattern of body composition and nutritional status in a group of prepubertal children with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy (SQCP) compared with healthy control children.
Study Design:
Subjects were enrolled for this cross-sectional study from two tertiary care settings. One hundred thirty-six subjects with SQCP, 2 to 12 years of age, were evaluated by anthropometric measures, or by anthropometric and total body water (TBW) measures (n = 28), with 39 control subjects.
Results:
Body composition and nutritional status indicators were significantly reduced in children with SQCP. Accretion of fat-free mass with age was smaller for children with SQCP. Calculation of body fat from two skin folds correlated best with measures of fat mass from TBW.
Conclusion:
Malnutrition is common in children with SQCP. Clinically available, serial anthropometric measures enable the clinician to identify malnourished children with SQCP.