INTRODUCTION Nutritional screening is a fundamental aspect of the initial evaluation of the hospitalised patient. Body Mass Index (BMI) in association with other parameters is a good marker of malnutrition (<18.5 kg/m2), but it presents the handicap that the great majority of patients cannot be weighed and measured. For this reason it is necessary to find other indicators that can be measured i...

INTRODUCTION Body mass index (BMI) is widely accepted as one of the best indicators of nutritional status in adults. Mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) is another anthropometric measure that has also been used to evaluate adult nutritional status. The objective of this study was to evaluate the use of MUAC as a simpler and reliable alternative to BMI. A suitable cut-off value was also proposed ...

MUAC is used as an indicator for assessing acute undernutrition among children below five years of age. WHO child growth standards (2006) have given age related z-scores for both boys and girls for MUAC for identification of acute undernutrition among children below five years. A total of 4737 observations for MUAC had been made on 2305 children below 6 years of age living in an urban slum of D...

Low mid-upper-arm circumference (MUAC), determined on the basis of a fixed cut-off value, has commonly been used as a proxy for low weight-for-height (wasting). The use of a fixed cut-off value was based on the observation that MUAC showed small age- and sex-specific differences. However, in 1993, a WHO Expert Committee concluded that age independence is not reflected in the true pattern of mid...

BACKGROUND Epidemiological studies have observed protective effects of mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) against all-cause mortality mostly in Western populations. However, evidence on cause-specific mortality is limited. METHODS The sample included 19 575 adults from a population-based cohort study in rural Bangladesh, who were followed up for an average of 7.9 years for mortality. Cox prop...

BACKGROUND Early identification of children <5 yrs with acute malnutrition is a priority. Acute malnutrition is defined by the World Health Organization as a mid-upper-arm circumference (MUAC) <12.5 cm or a weight-for-height Z-score (WHZ) <-2. MUAC is a simple and low-cost indicator to screen for acute malnutrition in communities, but MUAC cut-offs currently recommended by WHO do not identify t...

The objective of the study was to test the hypothesis that changes in arm anthropometry can be used to determine the risk of faltering growth in twin gestations. Serial data on midupper arm circumference (MUAC) and maternal weight gain were collected from a sample of 156 mothers. Changes in MUAC were monitored from 20 to 34 weeks. Women with a large loss of MUAC (greater than 1.5 cm), particula...

BACKGROUND The use of proportional weight gain as a discharge criterion for MUAC admissions to programs treating severe acute malnutrition (SAM) is no longer recommended by WHO. The critical limitation with the proportional weight gain criterion was that children who are most severely malnourished tended to receive shorter treatment compared to less severely malnourished children. Studies have ...

OBJECTIVE To compare the performance of mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) against weight-for-height Z-score (WHZ) for predicting inpatient deaths in children under 5 years of age. DESIGN Diagnostic test accuracy study. SETTING Paediatric emergency department of a tertiary care hospital catering to semi-urban and rural population in Delhi, India. SUBJECTS Hospitalized children (n 1663) ag...

BACKGROUND The objectives of this study were to (i) describe the relationship between weight changes and MUAC changes in children aged between 6 and 59 months during treatment for SAM in CMAM programmes in three country contexts (Malawi, Ethiopia and Bangladesh) admitted using MUAC and (ii) describe the sensitivity of both MUAC and weight to episodes of disease experienced during the SAM treatm...