Abstract
Author(s): Noor Saï¬Âza Mohamad Nor,Nur Shahida Abdul Aziz, Cheong Siew Man,Rashidah Ambak, and Mohd Azahadi Omar
.Introduction:Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD),Down Syndrome (DS) and Cerebral Palsy (CP) are the most common disabilities among children. Nutritional status assessment is important as these children are at risk of underweight, overweight or obesity. Therefore, the objectives of this review were to identify evidence on the prevalence of nutritional status of children with DS, CP and ASD, and to determine tools and indicators to measure the nutritional status of these children. Methods: This scopingreviewwasconductedusingaframeworksuggestedbyArkseyandO’Maley.Acomprehensivesearchwasperformedto identify published and unpublished works, reviews, grey literature and reports. Inclusion criteria for the search were articles in English published from 1990 to 2014 and related to children with ASD, DS and CP.Titles, abstract, and keywords foreligibility were examined independently by there searchers. Results:A total of 305,268 titles were extracted from electronic databases and other resources. Based on the inclusion criteria, 21 articles were selected for review. The prevalence of overweight or obese childrenwith DS rangedfrom33.5%to43.5%. TheprevalenceofunderweightchildrenwithCP was22.2% to78.2%.Children with AS Data younger age were more likely to be overweight or obese compared with normal developing children.The common nutritionalindicatorsusedwerez-scoresforweight-for-age,height-for-age,bodymassindex-for-age,andheadcircumference-forage. Conclusions: Overall, there is emerging evidence on the nutritional status of children with ASD, DS and CP although this isstillverylimitedindevelopingcountriesincludingMalaysia.TheevidenceshowsthatchildrenwithCPwereatriskofbeing underweight,whilechildrenwithDSandASDwereatriskofbeingoverweightorobese.
<Share this article
