Malnutrition and Catch-Up Growth during Childhood and Puberty

This chapter reviews the most recent data on malnutrition and catch-up growth published between July 1, 2015 and June 30, 2016. Catch-up growth is defined as height velocity above the expected for age that occurs after a period of growth retardation during childhood and puberty. The first paper in this chapter deals with research priorities in the field of malnutrition and highlights the most rated questions for future studies by experts (Angood et al., 2016). This is followed by research studies providing new insights into various aspects of the field: meaningful parameters for the measurement of population-level catch-up in linear growth in children (Leroy et al., 2015); new postnatal growth standards for preterm infants (Villar et al., 2015); the consequences of marginally low birth weight on weight and height in childhood (Berglund et al., 2016); important components of the malnutrition rehabilitation diet, especially proteins (Ghosh 2016; Manary et al., 2016; Stobaugh et al., 2016; Batra et al, 2016; Masarwi et al., 2016; Bortolotti et al., 2016; Semba et al., 2016), micronutrients (Shafique et al., 2016), and prebiotics (Bryk et al., 2015); and the link between the gut macrobiota and malnutrition (Blanton et al, 2016).