Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/28963
Title: | Understanding Sex Differences in Childhood Undernutrition: A Narrative Review |
Authors: | Thurstans, S Opondo, C Seal, A Wells, JC Khara, T Dolan, C Briend, A Myatt, M Garenne, M Mertens, A Sear, R Kerac, M |
Keywords: | undernutrition;sex;age |
Issue Date: | 23-Feb-2022 |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Citation: | Thurstans, S. et al. (2022) 'Understanding Sex Differences in Childhood Undernutrition: A Narrative Review', Nutrients, 14 (5), 948, pp. 1 - 15. doi: 10.3390/nu14050948. |
Abstract: | Complementing a recent systematic review and meta-analysis which showed that boys are more likely to be wasted, stunted, and underweight than girls, we conducted a narrative review to explore which early life mechanisms might underlie these sex differences. We addressed different themes, including maternal and newborn characteristics, immunology and endocrinology, evolutionary biology, care practices, and anthropometric indices to explore potential sources of sex differences in child undernutrition. Our review found that the evidence on why sex differences occur is limited but that a complex interaction of social, environmental, and genetic factors likely underlies these differences throughout the life cycle. Despite their bigger size at birth and during infancy, in conditions of food deprivation, boys experience more undernutrition from as early as the foetal period. Differences appear to be more pronounced in more severe presentations of undernutrition and in more socioeconomically deprived contexts. Boys are more vulnerable to infectious disease, and differing immune and endocrine systems appear to explain some of this disadvantage. Limited evidence also suggests that different sociological factors and care practices might exert influence and have the potential to exacerbate or reverse observed differences. Further research is needed to better understand sex differences in undernutrition and the implications of these for child outcomes and prevention and treatment programming. |
Description: | Data Availability Statement: Data used were from published studies. In addition to published studies, we sourced data from the global Food security index, found at https://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/Index (accessed on 7 September 2021), and from the DHS StatCompiler https://www.statcompiler.com/en/ (accessed on 7 September 2021). |
URI: | https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/28963 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14050948 |
Other Identifiers: | ORCiD: Jonathan C. Wells https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0411-8025 ORCiD:Tanya Khara https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6251-0052 ORCiD: Carmel Dolan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1130-6948 ORCiD: André Briend https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9390-8541 ORCiD: Mark Myatt https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1119-1474 ORCiD: Rebecca Sear https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4315-0223 ORCiD: Marko Kerac https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3745-7317 948 |
Appears in Collections: | Dept of Life Sciences Research Papers |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
---|---|---|---|---|
FullText.pdf | Copyright © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). | 679.78 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
This item is licensed under a Creative Commons License