Anthropometric indicators, including stunting, underweight, and wasting, have previously been associated with poor neurocognitive outcomes. This link may exist because malnutrition and infection, which are known to affect height and weight, also impact brain structure according to animal models. However, a relationship between anthropometric indicators and brain structural measures has not been tested yet, perhaps because stunting, underweight, and wasting are uncommon in higher-resource settings. Further, with diminished anthropometric growth prevalent in low-resource settings, where biological and psychosocial hazards are most severe, one might expect additional links between measures of poverty, anthropometry, and brain structure. To begin to examine these relationships, we conducted an MRI study in 2-3-month-old infants growing up in the extremely impoverished urban setting of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The sample size was relatively small because the challenges of investigating infant brain structure in a low-resource setting needed to be realized and resolved before introducing a larger cohort. Initially, fifty-four infants underwent T1 sequences using 3T MRI, and resulting structural images were segmented into gray and white matter maps, which were carefully evaluated for accurate tissue labeling by a pediatric neuroradiologist. Gray and white matter volumes from 29 infants (79 ± 10 days-of-age; F/M = 12/17), whose segmentations were of relatively high quality, were submitted to semi-partial correlation analyses with stunting, underweight, and wasting, which were measured using height-for-age (HAZ), weight-for-age (WAZ), and weight-for-height (WHZ) scores. Positive semi-partial correlations (after adjusting for chronological age and sex and correcting for multiple comparisons) were observed between white matter volume and HAZ and WAZ; however, WHZ was not correlated with any measure of brain volume. No associations were observed between income-to-needs or maternal education and brain volumetric measures, suggesting that measures of poverty were not associated with total brain tissue volume in this sample. Overall, these results provide the first link between diminished anthropometric growth and white matter volume in infancy. Challenges of conducting a developmental neuroimaging study in a low-resource country are also described.

中文翻译：

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将人体测量指标与贫困中成长的两个月大孟加拉国婴儿的大脑结构联系起来：一项试点研究


人体测量指标，包括发育迟缓、体重不足和消瘦，此前已被认为与神经认知结果不佳有关。这种联系可能存在，因为根据动物模型，营养不良和感染会影响身高和体重，也会影响大脑结构。然而，人体测量指标和大脑结构测量之间的关系尚未得到测试，可能是因为在资源丰富的环境中，发育迟缓、体重不足和消瘦并不常见。此外，由于在生物和社会心理危害最为严重的资源匮乏地区，人体测量增长普遍放缓，人们可能会期望贫困、人体测量和大脑结构之间存在更多联系。为了开始研究这些关系，我们对在孟加拉国达卡极度贫困的城市环境中长大的 2-3 个月大的婴儿进行了 MRI 研究。样本量相对较小，因为在引入更大的队列之前需要认识并解决在资源匮乏的环境中研究婴儿大脑结构的挑战。最初，54 名婴儿使用 3T MRI 接受了 T1 序列，所得结构图像被分割成灰质和白质图，并由儿科神经放射科医生仔细评估其准确的组织标记。 29 名婴儿（79 ± 10 天龄；F/M = 12/17）的灰质和白质体积的分割质量相对较高，并进行了与发育迟缓、体重不足和消瘦的半偏相关分析，使用年龄别身高 (HAZ)、年龄别体重 (WAZ) 和身高别体重 (WHZ) 分数进行测量。 在白质体积与 HAZ 和 WAZ 之间观察到正半偏相关（调整实际年龄和性别并校正多重比较后）；然而，WHZ 与任何脑容量测量值均不相关。在收入与需求或母亲教育和脑容量测量之间没有观察到任何关联，这表明贫困测量与该样本中的总脑组织体积无关。总体而言，这些结果提供了婴儿期人体生长减少与白质体积之间的第一个联系。还描述了在资源匮乏国家进行发育神经影像研究的挑战。