Jason Cawley, Filippo Visco Comandini
Wolfram Solutions
Objectives: Malnutrition has a considerable effect on the body development during childhood and, in particular, it affects brain development and cognitive abilities. In case of undernutrition, there is a competition for limited energy resources in the rapidly growing and maturing body, between the development of the brain and the development of the rest of the body.
Methods: We propose a mathematical model that links the daily nutrient intakes to brain and body development. The model characterizes normative infant growth curves and is able to simulate different scenarios like regular feeding, catch-up growth and under- and over-nutrition based on changes in nutritional intake. Available energy generated from varied nutrient intake are assigned to different reservoirs (brain maintenance and its development, body maintenance and its development and physical activity). In case of underfeeding and malnutrition, these reservoirs will compete for the caloric resources.
Results: We first successfully characterized the normative growth curves associated with each percentile “growth channel” of the WHO standard growth curves. We subsequently used the model to estimate the daily nutrient intakes for the first 5 years of a longitudinal Guatemala study (N =92).
Conclusions: The proposed brain and body predation growth model provides a framework for mechanistic exploration of anthropometric outcome and permits evaluations of different scenarios driven by nutrient intakes, such as regular feeding, malnutrition, and required caloric intake to support catch-up growth.
References:
[1] Butte Nancy Energy requirement of infants,Public Health Nutrition. – 2005. – 7A : Vol. 8. – pp. 953-967 .
[2] Dekaban Anatole and Sadowsky Doris Changes in Brian Weights during the span of human life: relation of brain weights to body heights and body weights , Annals of Neurology. – 1978. – Vol. 4. – pp. 345-356.
[3] Hazhir Rhamandad Human Growth and body weight dynamics: an integrative systems model, PloS one. – 2014. – 12 : Vol. 9. – p. e114609.
[4] Kuzawa Christopher [et al.] Metabolic costs and evolutionary implications of human brain development, Proceedings of the National Academy of sciences. – 2014. – 36 : Vol. 111. – pp. 13010-13015
Reference: PAGE 25 (2016) Abstr 5973 [www.page-meeting.org/?abstract=5973]
Poster: Methodology - New Modelling Approaches