AbstractAccording to the World Health Organization, 45% of deaths among children under 5 years of age are caused by childhood malnutrition, which affects 224 million children worldwide. The Barbados Nutrition Study (BNS) is a 50+year longitudinal study on a Barbadian cohort (N=258) with histories of moderate to severe protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) in the first year of life and healthy controls. Interestingly, a recent BNS publication used quantitative electroencephalography (EEG) to show differences in brain function (lower alpha1 activity and higher theta, alpha2 and beta activity) in children who suffered from early PEM compared to healthy controls. However, the adult brain function following early childhood PEM has not been reported in this cohort. In the current study, EEG recordings were undertaken during a Go-No-Go task on a subsample of the BNS cohort (n=55) at ages 45-51 years. Evoked-related potentials (ERP) analyses show that, compared to the control group (n=29), participants with histories of early PEM (n=24) presented with lower N2 amplitudes and a higher omission error rates, associated with conflict monitoring and attention deficits, respectively. These results may be linked to the attention and executive impairments that have been previously reported in this cohort.
Effect of Early Childhood Malnutrition on Tooth Eruption Sequence in Nepalese Children
