Late "catch-up" growth after severe infantile malnutrition.

Prolonged observations of children severely malnourished in early life suggested that permanent stunting in body length and head size resulted (1, 2). Studies with small laboratory animals lent support to these observations (3). Besides the obvious species differences, there were other important distinctions between the two types of studies. Whereas the experimental animals after the early insult received an optimum diet, the children, almost without exception, continued to live in the same environment in which they had become severely malnourished originally. This makes it impossible to distinguish between the late effects of early malnutrition and the effect of life-long existence in the conditions of extreme proverty, where adequate nutrition is most unlikely.