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Reducing stunting among children: the potential contribution of diagnostics

Nature volume 444, pages 29–38 (2006)Cite this article

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Stunting affects ~ 147 million children in developing countries. Studies have pointed to a relationship between stunting and different pathogens that are associated with diarrhoeal illness. New easy-to-use tools for diagnosing these pathogens could help to identify children at risk for growth shortfall, and reduce the prevalence of stunting and the large burden of disease associated with it.

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Figure 1: Core probability tree.
Figure 2: Distribution of the reduction in stunting prevalence for a test that requires only minimal infrastructure, and is 100% sensitive and 100% specific.

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  • 26 March 2018

    This article was initially published with an incorrect DOI. A new DOI has been assigned and registered at Crossref, and has been corrected in the article.

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Acknowledgements

The views of Dr. Maghill are his personal viewpoints and do not represent official policy of the US Department of Defense or the US Army. The authors thank T. Brewer and R. Rabinovich (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Washington, USA), P. Duffy (Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, Washington, USA), N. White (Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand) and A. Shepherd (Omega Diagnostics Group PLC, Alva, Scotland, UK) for comments on earlier presentations of this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. RAND Corporation, PO Box 2138, 1776 Main Street, Santa Monica, 90407-2138, California, USA

    Karen A. Ricci, Federico Girosi & Yee-Wei Lim

  2. Washington University School of Medicine, Campus Box 8208, 660 South Euclid Avenue, St Louis, 63110, Missouri, USA

    Phillip I. Tarr

  3. Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences, APO, 96546-5000, AP, Thailand

    Carl Mason

  4. National Institutes of Health, 16 Center Drive, Bethesda, 20892, Maryland, USA

    Mark Miller

  5. Emory University, Mail Stop 1370/004/1AD, 1462 Clifton Road, Atlanta, 30322, Georgia, USA

    James Hughes

  6. International Vaccine Institute, San 4-8 Bongcheon-7-dong, Kwanak-gu, Seoul, 151-818, Korea

    Lorenz von Seidlein

  7. the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit, Bangkok, Thailand

    Lorenz von Seidlein

  8. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, PO Box 23350, Seattle, 98102, Washington, USA

    Jan M. Agosti

  9. University of Virginia, PO Box 80-1379, Charlottesville, 22908-1379, Virginia, USA

    Richard L. Guerrant

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Correspondence to Karen A. Ricci.

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Ricci, K., Girosi, F., Tarr, P. et al. Reducing stunting among children: the potential contribution of diagnostics. Nature 444 (Suppl 1), 29–38 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05444

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