Play helps growth-stunted kids: study

By Megan Rauscher

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Mental and social stimulation
through play early in life appears to have lasting benefits in
poorly nourished children with growth retardation.

According to a study in The Lancet this week, mental
stimulation at 9 to 24 months of age among a group of
growth-stunted Jamaican children led to improved cognitive
function and better academic performance in high school.

In this study, “home visits for mothers and children by
community health workers trained to demonstrate stimulation
activities and encourage mother-child interaction improved the
development of undernourished children,” Dr. Susan Walker who
led the study told Reuters Health.

“This early childhood intervention had sustained benefits
for ability at age 18 years and reduced school dropout,” added
Walker, who is with the University of West Indies in Jamaica.

In developing countries, poor nutrition early in life,
either before or after birth, or both, causes stunting in one
third of all children younger than age 5. Children with stunted
growth early in life have cognitive difficulties and perform
poorly at school later in life.

In 1991, Walker and colleagues published the results of an
initial 2-year study of 129 stunted Jamaican children, which
showed that two types of intervention — nutritional support in
the form of 1 kg of milk-based formula per week and
psychosocial stimulation — was associated with improved
cognitive development.

The researchers who have been following the children ever
since now report that the early cognitive benefits of
psychosocial stimulation are sustained.

Compared with growth-stunted children who received no
intervention, those who enjoyed stimulating play as toddlers
had higher IQ scores and higher reading and math test scores at
age 17 and 18 years. Non-stimulated growth-stunted children had
marked deficits in reading and math and were more likely to
drop out of school.

The early benefits of nutritional support alone, however,
were not sustained.

But Dr. Inga Thorsdottir from the University of Iceland
suggests in a commentary in The Lancet that the level of
nutritional support may have been too low to elicit sustained
benefits.

Summing up, Walker and colleagues say their findings
“emphasize the need to increase efforts to prevent childhood
growth retardation” and show that “important benefits can be
achieved for children who are already undernourished through
early childhood stimulation.”

According to Thorsdottir, finding ways to reduce the
incidence of childhood growth retardation and to improve brain
function and educational attainment is “very important, both
for individuals’ quality of life and for the economics of
developing countries.”

SOURCE: The Lancet October 19, 2005.