Although the mid upper arm circumference (MUAC) is used as a proxy to assess wasting in children, its validity abounds in controversies. This study therefore assessed the validity of MUAC as a measure of nutritional status among children aged 12-59 months in urban setting in western Nigeria. A cross sectional study of children aged 12-59 months in selected nursery schools in Moniya, Akinyele lo...

OBJECTIVE The World Health Organization recommends discharging children admitted to nutrition programs treating severe acute malnutrition, with a low mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC <115 mm) when weight gain is >15%. When this recommendation is followed, the most severely malnourished children receive a shorter treatment compared to children that are less severely malnourished. This study ass...

OBJECTIVE To assess the appropriateness of current mid upper-arm circumference (MUAC) cut-offs to identify children with severe acute malnutrition in India. DESIGN The analysis concerned 6307 children admitted to nutrition rehabilitation centres (2009-2011) where they received therapeutic care as per guidelines by WHO and the Indian Academy of Pediatrics. SETTING States of Jharkhand, Madhya...

BACKGROUND No studies have examined if mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) can be an alternative screening tool for obesity in an international sample of children differing widely in levels of human development. OBJECTIVE Our aim is to determine whether MUAC could be used to identify obesity in children from 12 countries in five major geographic regions of the world. METHODS This observation...

BACKGROUND Mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) was recently endorsed and recommended for screening for acute malnutrition in the community. The objective of this study was to determine whether a colour-banded MUAC strap would allow minimally trained mothers to screen their own children for malnutrition, without locating the mid-point of the left upper arm by measurement, as currently recommended...

BACKGROUND Timely treatment of acute malnutrition in children <5 years of age could prevent >500,000 deaths annually. Screening at community level is essential to identify children with malnutrition. Current WHO guidelines for community screening for malnutrition recommend a Mid Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) of <115 mm to identify severe acute malnutrition (SAM). However, it is currently uncle...

Mid upper arm circumference-based diagnosis of severe acute malnutrition is seen as very attractive because it is assumed to be simple to use in measuring the arm and also requires a single cut-off without having to compute an index or compare to a reference population. The circumference of the left upper arm measured at the mid-point between the tip of the shoulder and the tip of the elbow is ...

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends the assessment of nutritional recovery using the same anthropometric indicator that was used to diagnose severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in children. However, related empirical evidence from low-income countries is lacking. Non-oedematous children (n = 661) aged 6-59 months admitted to a community-based outpatient therapeutic program for SAM in rur...

BACKGROUND This study aimed to determine anthropometric indicators associated with dyspnea and spirometric parameters in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). MATERIALS AND METHODS A cross-sectional and observational study was carried out on 88 patients with COPD, who were visited in an outpatient respiratory clinic of a university hospital during two months. Patient hei...

The reference charts for mid upper arm (MUAC), chest (CHC) and head (HC) circumferences of a cohort of 317 healthy infants (153 boys and 164 girls) born in Shiraz (Southern Iran) and monitored from birth for 2 years are presented. Centiles for MUAC and HC lie below the Netherlands and US subjects respectively. However, there is no suggestion of ill health for Iranian subjects. The use of l...