CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Social-environmental factors may play an important role in the nutrition status of a population. The objectives of the present work are: to estimate nutritional status of schoolchildren and to analyze probability of occurrence of malnutrition in relation to social-environmental conditions of residence from populations of three provinces of Argentina. A cross-sectional survey of children from Buenos Aires (BA), Entre Rios (ER) and Mendoza (Mz) provinces was conducted. The sample comprised 927 boys and 893 girls aged 3-6 years. Underweight (Uw), Stunting (St), Wasting (Wa), Overweight (Ow) and Obesity (Ob) were estimated following the WHO criteria. A structured questionnaire was applied to evaluate social-environmental characteristics. Nutritional status was compared between provinces (Chi 2 test). The social-environmental information was processed by Principal Components Analysis (PCA), and a Generalized Linear Model against the nutritional status was applied for each province. Total sample prevalence was: Uw 1.7%; St 5.4%; Wa 1.8%; Ow 17.4% and Ob 11.4%. Differences between provinces were found: Underweight was higher in ER while Obesity was in Mz (p< 0.05). PCA first axis discriminated social-economic conditions (favorable-unfavorable) and the second, environmental conditions (urban-rural). Only BA showed association between obesity/favorable socio-economic conditions and stunting/unfavorable ones. On the other hand, there was no association between nutritional status and the second axis. We conclude that environmental conditions do not correlate with nutritional status among these populations. However, social-economic conditions do in BA, where its internal heterogeneity and social-economic contrast led to distinguish the two extremes of malnutrition.