Child wasting and concurrent stunting in low- and middle-income countries

Sustainable Development Goal 2.2—to end malnutrition by 2030—includes the elimination of child wasting, defined as a weight-for-length z-score that is more than two standard deviations below the median of the World Health Organization standards for child growth1. Prevailing methods to measure wasting rely on cross-sectional surveys that cannot measure onset, recovery and persistence—key features that inform preventive interventions and estimates of disease burden. Here we analyse 21 longitudinal cohorts and show that wasting is a highly dynamic process of onset and recovery, with incidence peaking between birth and 3 months. Many more children experience an episode of wasting at some point during their first 24 months than prevalent cases at a single point in time suggest. For example, at the age of 24 months, 5.6% of children were wasted, but by the same age (24 months), 29.2% of children had experienced at least one wasting episode and 10.0% had experienced two or more episodes. Children who were wasted before the age of 6 months had a faster recovery and shorter episodes than did children who were wasted at older ages; however, early wasting increased the risk of later growth faltering, including concurrent wasting and stunting (low length-for-age z-score), and thus increased the risk of mortality. In diverse populations with high seasonal rainfall, the population average weight-for-length z-score varied substantially (more than 0.5 z in some cohorts), with the lowest mean z-scores occurring during the rainiest months; this indicates that seasonally targeted interventions could be considered. Our results show the importance of establishing interventions to prevent wasting from birth to the age of 6 months, probably through improved maternal nutrition, to complement current programmes that focus on children aged 6–59 months.

Sustainable Development Goal 2.2-to end malnutrition by 2030-includes the elimination of child wasting, defined as a weight-for-length z-score that is more than two standard deviations below the median of the World Health Organization standards for child growth 1 .Prevailing methods to measure wasting rely on cross-sectional surveys that cannot measure onset, recovery and persistence-key features that inform preventive interventions and estimates of disease burden.Here we analyse 21 longitudinal cohorts and show that wasting is a highly dynamic process of onset and recovery, with incidence peaking between birth and 3 months.Many more children experience an episode of wasting at some point during their first 24 months than prevalent cases at a single point in time suggest.For example, at the age of 24 months, 5.6% of children were wasted, but by the same age (24 months), 29.2% of children had experienced at least one wasting episode and 10.0% had experienced two or more episodes.Children who were wasted before the age of 6 months had a faster recovery and shorter episodes than did children who were wasted at older ages; however, early wasting increased the risk of later growth faltering, including concurrent wasting and stunting (low length-for-age z-score), and thus increased the risk of mortality.In diverse populations with high seasonal rainfall, the population average weight-forlength z-score varied substantially (more than 0.5 z in some cohorts), with the lowest mean z-scores occurring during the rainiest months; this indicates that seasonally targeted interventions could be considered.Our results show the importance of establishing interventions to prevent wasting from birth to the age of 6 months, probably through improved maternal nutrition, to complement current programmes that focus on children aged 6-59 months.
Wasting is a form of undernutrition that results from a loss of muscle and fat tissue from acute malnutrition.It affects an estimated 45 million children under the age of 5 years (6.8%) worldwide, with more than half of these children living in South Asia 2 .Children are considered wasted if their weight-for-length z-score (WLZ) is more than two standard deviations below the median of international standards, and severe wasting is defined as three standard deviations below the median 3 .Wasted children have weakened immune systems 4 , predisposing them to infections and more severe illness once infected 5 .Wasting in very young children increases their risk of mortality (relative risk: 2.3), and this risk increases further if they are also stunted and underweight (defined as a length-for-age z-score (LAZ) below -2 and a weight-for-age z-score (WAZ) below -2, respectively; relative risk: 12.3; ref. 6).Longitudinal studies have shown that wasting is also associated with a higher risk of stunting 7 and poor neurocognitive development at older ages 8,9 .Communitybased identification and management of severely wasted children (WLZ below -3), including treatment with high-calorie, ready-to-usetherapeutic foods, has proven effective 10 , but rates of relapse and mortality remain high in this fragile subgroup 11,12 .Primary prevention of wasting would be preferable to treatment, but there are few proven preventive interventions, especially in infants under 6 months.Nutritional intervention trials have had mixed success, with no evidence for reductions in wasting with breastfeeding support from birth, but with larger reductions achieved by administering small-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplements between the ages of 6 months and 24 months (14% relative reduction in wasting; 31% relative reduction in severe wasting) 10,13,14 .
Wasting is thought to occur mainly from 6-24 months-the crucial period in which exclusive breastfeeding is no longer recommended, and adequate, appropriate and safe complementary feeding is required 15,16 .However, a more complete understanding of the epidemiology of wasting and how it varies by age is key to developing and targeting preventive interventions 15,17,18 .Unlike the cumulative process of linear growth faltering and stunting 19 , wasting varies considerably over time, both within individuals and within populations 20,21 .The dynamic nature of wasting means that the number of distinct episodes a child experiences might be poorly captured in cross-sectional, survey-based estimates 22 .Furthermore, seasonal patterns of wasting onset in relation to changes in food insecurity or disease can only be measured accurately with longitudinal data 18,23,24 .A synthesis of longitudinal cohort data across diverse populations provides a unique opportunity to study the timing, dynamics and burden of wasting in infants and young children, and to fill key knowledge gaps to inform future prevention efforts.

Pooled longitudinal analyses
Here we report a pooled analysis of 21 longitudinal cohorts from 10 low-or middle-income countries (LMICs) in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, in which length and weight were measured monthly in children of 0-24 months.Our primary objectives were to produce large-scale estimates of wasting incidence and recovery and to quantify the temporal and regional variation.We also assessed the concurrence of wasting and stunting and compared estimates of wasting prevalence and incidence.We analysed data from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Knowledge Integration (Ki) database, which has aggregated studies on child growth and development.Inclusion criteria were defined to select cohorts that are representative of general populations in LMICs, with sufficiently frequent measurements to investigate the acute, dynamic nature of wasting.Cohorts were included if they: (1) were conducted in LMICs; (2) enrolled children between birth and the age of 24 months and measured their length and weight repeatedly over time; (3) did not restrict enrolment to acutely ill children; (4) had a median birth year of 1990 or later; and (5) measured anthropometry at least monthly (Extended Data Fig. 1).Twenty-one cohorts met the inclusion criteria, encompassing 11,448 children and 198,154 total anthropometry measurements from birth to the age of 24 months (Fig. 1).
We calculated WLZs and LAZs using World Health Organization (WHO) 2006 growth standards 25 .We omitted 385 biologically implausible measurements (0.2%) of WLZ (z-scores of greater than 5 or less than -5), 212 (0.1%) measurements of LAZ (z-scores of greater than 6 or less than -6) and 216 measurements (0.1%) of WAZ (z-scores of greater than 5 or less than -6), following WHO recommendations 26 .Most included cohorts did not measure children after the age of 24 months, so analyses focused on birth to 24 months.Cohorts ranged in size from 160 children in the Transmission Dynamics of Crypto (TDC) cohort to 2,931 children in the MRC Keneba cohort (Fig. 1).Unless otherwise indicated, we conducted individual-level analyses within cohorts and then pooled cohort-specific estimates using random-effects models fitted with restricted maximum likelihood estimation-a conservative approach when cohort-specific estimates are heterogeneous.Cohorts were distributed throughout South Asia, Africa and Latin America, but did not cover entire regions (Extended Data Fig. 2).Most cohorts measured children every month through to the age of 24 months, but there was some attrition as children aged and there were four cohorts with few measurements beyond the age of 15 months (Extended Data Fig. 3).Pooled estimates at older ages could be slightly biased if unmeasured cohorts or children were systematically different from those that were included; for example, if children who were lost to follow-up were more likely to be wasted, we might have underestimated wasting at older ages.
We assessed the representativeness of Ki cohorts by comparing z-score measurements to population-based samples in demographic and health surveys (DHSs).Mean z-scores in Ki cohorts were generally representative on the basis of country-level DHS estimates, with lower WLZs (overall and by age) in Guatemala, Pakistan and South Africa and higher WLZs in Brazil and Guatemala (Extended Data Fig. 4).LAZs were generally lower in Ki cohorts, so estimates of concurrent wasting and stunting may be higher than estimates from population-based samples, and rates of wasting recovery in early life may be higher compared with the general population.

Age-specific patterns of wasting
Across all cohorts, the mean WLZ was near -0.5 at birth and then increased over the first 6 months before decreasing until 12 months (Fig. 2a).Age-specific patterns in WLZ were similar across geographical regions, but levels varied substantially by region.WLZs were markedly lower among South Asian cohorts, reflecting a much higher burden of malnutrition (Fig. 2a).Children were wasted for 16,139 (8.6%) measurements, and severely wasted for 3,391 (1.8%) measurements.Wasting prevalence was highest at birth (11.9%; 95% confidence interval (CI): 7.0, 19.5), in contrast with previous studies that showed that wasting prevalence peaked between 6 months and 24 months 7,27-29 (Fig. 2b).Across regions, the wasting prevalence decreased from birth to 3 months before increasing until the age of 12 months; however, wasting was much more prevalent in South Asian cohorts.In South Asian cohorts, in which low birthweight is common 30 , the at-birth wasting prevalence was 18.9% (95% CI: 15.0, 23.7), implicating causes of poor fetal growth such as maternal malnutrition, maternal morbidities and maternal small stature as key regional drivers of wasting 31,32 .Severe wasting followed a similar pattern but was much rarer (Extended Data Fig. 5a).
Wasting onset was highest during the first three months of life, owing largely to its high occurrence at birth (Fig. 2c).Overall, 12.9% (95% CI: 7.6, 20.1) of all children experienced wasting by the age of 3 months, and this accounted for almost half (47.8%) of children who ever experienced wasting in their first two years of life.Focusing on wasting prevalence alone masked how common it was for children to experience wasting in their first 24 months.After birth, up to 6.5% (95% CI: 4.9, 8.6) of children were wasted at a specific visit, but 29.2% (95% CI: 17.5, 44.7) of children experienced at least one wasting episode by 24 months of age.Cumulative incidence was highest in South Asian cohorts (52.2% (95% CI: 43.5, 60.7); Fig. 2b,c).Early onset of wasting was consistently high across countries with different levels of health spending, poverty and under-5 mortality, with early wasting particularly high (18.3%(95% CI: 13.5, 24.4) at birth) in the five cohorts with birth measures and a national health expenditure of less than 4.5% of gross domestic product (Extended Data Fig. 6).WHO child growth standards overestimate wasting at birth among children born prematurely 33 , although adjusting for gestational age among four cohorts with available data only reduced the at-birth stunting prevalence by 0.8% and increased the prevalence of being underweight by 0.7% (Extended Data Fig. 7).Even if premature birth were to account for some of the at-birth wasting, the small birth size, irrespective of cause, documented in this analysis raises concern because of its consequences for child growth faltering and mortality during the first 24 months of life 32 .

Wasting incidence and recovery
There was high variability in WLZ across longitudinal measurements, with an average within-child standard deviation of WLZ measurements of 0.76, compared to 0.64 for LAZ and 0.52 for WAZ.We thus defined unique wasting episodes by imposing a 60-day recovery period, covering two consequent monthly measurements, in which a child's WLZ measurements needed to remain above -2 for the child to be considered recovered and at risk for a future episode (Fig. 3a).Children who were born wasted were considered to have an incident episode of wasting at birth.More than half of all first wasting episodes occurred before the age of 9 months (median age of first-episode onset: 264 days), with a later onset for recurrent episodes among children who experienced them (median age of second-episode onset: days; median age of third-episode onset: 551 days).The mean number of wasting episodes experienced and wasting incidence at all ages was higher in South Asia, with the highest incidence in the first three months, with or without including episodes at birth (Fig. 3b).Ultimately, most children recovered from moderate or severe wasting episodes, reinforcing the status of wasting as an acute condition.Children met our definition of 'recovered' in 91.5% of episodes of moderate and 82.5% of episodes of severe wasting.Loss to follow-up might have affected recovery estimates because recovery can only occur in children who survive the episode.We did not have data on wasting treatment, so recovery might be more common in these highly monitored cohorts than in the general population, owing to treatment referrals.Across all cohorts, children recovered from 39.0% (95% CI: 34.0, 44.3) of wasting episodes within 30 days, 64.7% (95% CI: 59.3, 69.4) within 60 days and 71.1% (95% CI: 66.1, 75.6) within days, with lower recovery in South Asian cohorts compared with other regions (Fig. 3c).
We examined the distribution of WLZ in the three-month period after a child was considered to be recovered from wasting, stratified by the age at which the episode occurred.We found that children recovered to a higher WLZ after at-birth wasting or wasting episodes in the 0-6-month age window, as compared with episodes that occurred at older ages (Fig. 3d).Regression to the mean (RTM) could explain some wasting recovery, especially the rapid increase in WLZ among children who were born wasted (Fig. 3e).However, there was catch-up growth beyond the calculated RTM effect 34 (Extended Data Fig. 8), and we required a 60-day recovery period to better capture true recovery.In addition, placental insufficiency causes a large proportion of intrauterine growth restriction, leading to birth wasting, and rapid WLZ gain after might reflect true recovery to a child's growth potential after this constraint is removed 35,36 .Consistent with larger increases in WLZ during recovery from wasting among younger children, a larger proportion of children recovered within 30, 60 and 90 days if the wasting episode occurred before the age of 6 months (Fig. 3d).Younger children had a more variable WLZ (s.d.0.81 before 6 months; 0.54 from 6-24 months) and shorter wasting episodes (Extended Data Fig. 9).Wasting episodes were also longer at all ages in South Asian compared to African or Latin American cohorts (Extended Data Fig. 9).Longer episodes among older children is consistent with higher prevalence and lower incidence compared with children under 6 months.On average, the WLZ of children born wasted did not catch up with that of children not born wasted (Fig. 3e).Notably, children who were born wasted but who recovered had a higher cumulative incidence of wasting after the age of 6 months (38.1% cumulative incidence in children born wasted (95% CI: 28.2, 49.2) versus 24.2% cumulative incidence in children not born wasted (95% CI: 17.6, 32.4); Fig. 3f).Longitudinal analyses showed a negative, reinforcing relationship between wasting and stunting: at nearly every age, wasting increased the risk of future stunting and stunting increased the risk of future wasting, with the strength of the relationship increasing as children aged.This observation is consistent with longer durations of wasting episodes (Extended Data Fig. 10).

Seasonality of wasting
We joined monthly rainfall totals to cohorts by location and year.For each cohort, we estimated a seasonality index based on rainfall (details in Methods).We examined both the average WLZ over the calendar year and seasonal changes with respect to rainfall, under the hypothesis that seasonal changes in food availability and infection associated with rainfall could cause seasonal wasting 37 .The mean WLZ varied markedly by calendar date in almost all cohorts, with a consistent minimum mean WLZ coinciding with peak rainfall (Fig. 4a).When pooled across cohorts, the mean WLZ was −0.16 (95% CI: −0.19, −0.14) lower during the three-month period of peak rainfall, compared to the mean WLZ in the opposite three-month period of the year, (Fig. 4b).The mean seasonal decline in WLZ was −0.27 (95% CI: −0.31, −0.24) in cohorts with a seasonality index higher than 0.9, but some cohorts showed seasonal WLZ declines of more than -0.5 (Fig. 4b).
Children who experienced seasonal wasting during the rainy season had longer episodes and were at higher risk of future wasting episodes.Rainy-season wasting episodes lasted 7 days longer than dry season episodes (median 42 days (95% CI: 36.5, 45.5) versus 35 days (95% CI: 33.5, 38.5)).Incident wasting during the rainy season increased a child's risk of experiencing another wasting episode in the following dry season (relative risk: 2.1, 95% CI: 1.3, 3.4), and children who were wasted during the rainy season during their first year of life were 1.9 times (95% CI: 1.3, 2.8) more likely to be wasted during the next rainy season.
South Asian cohorts had temporally synchronous rainfall, so we estimated the WLZ at birth by calendar month, pooled across     the 11 South Asian cohorts.The mean WLZ at birth varied by up to 0.72 z (95% CI: 0.43, 1.02) depending on the month the child was born (range: −0.5 z to −1.3 z; Fig. 4c), which suggests that seasonally influenced maternal nutrition 38 -probably mediated through intrauterine growth restriction or premature birth 39 -was a major determinant of WLZ at birth.Birth month also influenced the effect of season on WLZ trajectories that persisted through a child's second year of life (Extended Data Fig. 11), and children born in the threemonth periods before or during maximum rainfall were more likely to be wasted after 6 months of age than were children born in the 6 months after maximum rainfall (cumulative incidence ratio: 1.4 (95% CI: 1.1, 1.9)).

Persistent and concurrent growth faltering
We examined more severe forms of growth faltering, including persistent wasting and concurrent wasting and stunting, because these conditions are associated with a higher mortality risk 6 .We first identified a subset of children who experienced persistent wasting during their first 24 months.We used a pragmatic definition 40 that classified children as persistently wasted if 50% or more of their WLZ measurements from birth to 24 months were below -2.This allowed us to capture both frequent short wasting episodes and less-frequent, longer episodes.Among 10,374 children with at least 4 measurements, 3.4% (95% CI: 2.0, 5.6) were persistently wasted.Children in South Asia had the highest proportion of measurements with wasting (Extended Data Fig. 5b) and the highest prevalence of persistent wasting in the first 24 months of life (7.2%;95% CI: 5.1, 10.4; Extended Data Fig. 5c).Among all children wasted at birth, 10.9% were persistently wasted after 6 months (95% CI: 8.7 to 13.5), whereas 6.3% of children who were not born wasted were persistently wasted after 6 months (95% CI: 4.3, 9.0).Finally, we examined the cumulative incidence of concurrent wasting and stunting and the timing of their overlap.Overall, 10.6% of children experienced concurrent wasting and stunting before 2 years of age (Extended Data Fig. 5d), and a further 1.5% experienced concurrent severe wasting and stunting-much higher than the estimates of point prevalence in the present study (4.1% at 24 months, 95% CI: 2.6, 6.4; Fig. 5a) or the 4.3% prevalence estimated in children under 5 years old in LMICs from cross-sectional surveys 41,42 .Concurrent wasting and stunting was most common in South Asia, with the highest prevalence at the age of 21 months (Fig. 5a), driven mainly by increases in stunting prevalence as children aged 19 .Wasted and stunted children were also underweight, as their maximum possible WAZ was below −2.35 (ref.43).Almost half of children who had prevalent growth faltering met two or more of these three growth faltering conditions, with 17-22% of all children experiencing multiple conditions after the age of 12 months (Fig. 5b).Longitudinal analyses showed that early growth faltering predisposed children to concurrent growth faltering at older ages: children who were wasted by the age of 6 months were 1.8 (95% CI: 1.6 to 2.1) times and children stunted before 6 months were 2.9 (95% CI: 2.5 to 3.4) times more likely to experience concurrent wasting and stunting between the ages of 18 months and 24 months.A companion article reports an in-depth investigation of key risk factors for persistent wasting and concurrent wasting and stunting, along with their consequences for future severe growth faltering and mortality 32 .

Discussion
Nearly all large-scale studies of child wasting (including the DHS programme) report the point prevalence of wasting, which has enabled broad comparisons between populations but does not capture the Children classified as 'never faltered' had not previously been wasted, stunted or underweight.Children in the 'recovered' category were not wasted, stunted or underweight but had experienced at least one of these conditions previously.All children who were wasted and stunted were also underweight.Proportions in each category were calculated within cohorts, pooled using random effects and scaled so that the percentages added up to 100%.The number of children contributing to each age ranged from 3,920 to 9,077, with 11,409 children in total.
number of episodes of wasting during the course of childhood 44,45 .By combining information across several longitudinal cohorts, this study shows that children have a much higher cumulative incidence of wasting between birth and 24 months (29.2%) than was previously known.Children in all included cohorts experienced a higher incidence compared with prevalence, owing to the episodic nature of acute malnutrition; this pattern was most stark in South Asian cohorts, in which, from birth to 24 months and pooled across cohorts, 52.2% of children experienced at least one wasting episode, 7.3% were persistently wasted and 10.1% had experienced concurrent wasting and stunting.This evidence shows that the cumulative, child-level burden of wasting is higher than cross-sectional measures of prevalence would suggest, and that assessments of wasting and stunting in isolation do not account for their joint burden, which can be substantial.This is of particular relevance in South Asia, where the largest number of stunted and wasted children live, and where, although the prevalence of stunting is decreasing, the prevalence of wasting is not 2,46 .
Our results show consistent patterns in the timing of wasting onset by age and by season, with implications for therapeutic and preventive interventions.Wasting incidence was highest from birth to the age of 3 months, and among children who experienced any wasting during their first 24 months, 48% had their first episode by 3 months.Children born wasted were much more likely to experience more growth faltering at older ages, including more severe forms such as persistent wasting from 6 to 24 months and concurrent wasting and stunting at 18 months (Fig. 3f).The age-specific patterns in prevalent wasting and concurrent wasting and stunting summarized in this analysis are in accordance with previous reports 7, [47][48][49][50] .To our knowledge, our finding that the wasting incidence was highest from birth to the age of 3 months has not been previously reported across diverse cohorts.We found higher rates of recovery among children who were wasted before 6 months, but early wasting episodes predisposed children to subsequent episodes at older ages, which tended to be longer and more likely to co-occur with stunting.These new findings suggest that the prenatal period through to 6 months old should be a focus for preventive wasting interventions, because preventing episodes during this early window would reduce the risk of later, more severe forms of growth faltering and lower a child's risk of all-cause mortality substantially, as we detail in a companion paper 32 .
Large seasonal changes in the at-birth WLZ show a plasticity in population-level wasting whereby improvements are possible over a period of months rather than years or generations.The WLZ varied markedly by season in most cohorts, and in South Asia, the WLZ varied by up to 0.7 z at birth, with consequences that persisted throughout the first 24 months (Fig. 4c and Extended Data Fig. 11).Seasonal effects might extend to older ages: children born during the rainy season in rural Gambia-coinciding with the hunger season-experienced higher rates of all-cause mortality over their entire lifespan compared with children born during other times of the year 51 .This suggests that in utero programming of the immune system could be a notable consequence of prenatal malnutrition.This study has not elucidated the mechanism that links seasonal rainfall with wasting, but the consistency of effect across diverse cultural and environmental contexts suggests shared mechanisms 52 .
Consistent timing with highly seasonal rainfall helps in the planning of therapeutic programs, but seasonally targeted preventive interventions could benefit from a finer understanding of the mechanisms.In-depth analyses of some birth cohorts that contributed to the present synthesis suggest that multiple mechanisms underlie seasonal wasting.Seasonal food insecurity coincides with peak energy demands during agricultural work periods, which, in turn, leads to undernutrition among pregnant and lactating mothers and their children 17,36,51 .Women working in agriculture often have less time to spend with their children, which can reduce the frequency of breastfeeding and can result in the early-morning preparation of weaning foods that become contaminated in hot, humid conditions 53,54 .Weather-driven seasonal increases in the transmission of infectious diseases could also have a role in seasonal wasting, but the effect would vary spatially and temporally and would not fully explain the consistent patterns observed here.
Sustainable Development Goal 2.2 calls for the elimination of malnutrition by 2030, with child wasting as its primary indicator 1 .The WHO global action plan on child wasting identified four key outcomes to achieve goal 2.2: reduce low birthweight; improve child health; improve child feeding; and improve the treatment of wasting 55 .Our results align with the WHO action plan but elevate the importance of improving at-birth child outcomes, with a focus on both maternal support during pregnancy and nutritional supplementation in food-insecure populations for women of child-bearing age, pregnant women and children under 24 months.At this time, evidence-based interventions that target this early window include balanced supplementation with protein, iron and folic acid for pregnant women and women of child-bearing age, and intermittent preventive administration of sulfadoxinepyrimethamine to pregnant women in regions of Africa with high rates of malaria transmission 56,57 .For children aged 6-24 months, small quantities of lipid-based nutrient supplements can reduce the levels of moderate and severe wasting 10 .If preventive or therapeutic interventions focus on children younger than 6 months, then they must be integrated carefully with current recommendations for exclusive breastfeeding.In populations with highly seasonal rainfall, increased and seasonally targeted supplementation should be considered.

Online content
Any methods, additional references, Nature Portfolio reporting summaries, source data, extended data, supplementary information, acknowledgements, peer review information; details of author contributions and competing interests; and statements of data and code availability are available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06480-z. each study's leadership team to be representative of the country and study teams that originally collected the data.Consortium members reviewed their cohort's data within the Ki database to ensure external and internal consistency of cohort-level estimates.Consortium members provided input on the statistical analysis plan, interpretation of results and manuscript writing.Per the request of consortium members, the manuscript includes cohort-level and regional results to maximize the utility of the study findings for local investigators and public health agencies.Analysis code has been published with the manuscript to promote transparency and extensions of our research by local and global investigators.
Extended Data Fig. 1 | Ki cohort selection.Analyses focused on longitudinal cohorts to enable the estimation of prospective incidence rates and growth velocity.On 15 July 2018, there were 97 longitudinal studies with data collected and made available by Ki.From this set, we applied five inclusion criteria to select cohorts for analysis.Our rationale for each criterion is as follows.
(1) Studies were conducted in LMICs.Our target of inference for analyses was children in LMICs, which remains a key target population for preventive interventions.(2) Studies measured length and weight between birth and age 24 months.We were principally interested in growth faltering during the first two years of life including at birth, thought to be the key window for linear growth faltering.(3) Studies did not restrict enrolment to acutely ill children.Our focus on descriptive analyses led us to target, to the extent possible, the general population.We thus excluded some studies that exclusively enrolled acutely ill children, such as children who presented to hospital with acute diarrhoea or who were severely malnourished.( 4) Studies enrolled at least 200 children.Age-stratified incident episodes of stunting and wasting were sufficiently rare that we wanted to ensure each cohort would have enough information to estimate rates before contributing to pooled estimates.
(5) Studies collected anthropometry measurements at least every three months.We limited studies to those with higher temporal resolution to ensure that we adequately captured incident episodes and recovery.We further restricted analyses of wasting incidence and recovery to cohorts with monthly measurements because of high temporal variation in WHZ within individuals.This figure includes the results from correcting at-birth z-scores in the Ki cohorts that measured gestational age (GA).The corrections are using the Intergrowth standards and are implemented using the R growthstandards package (https://ki-tools.github.io/growthstandards/).Overall, the prevalence at birth decreased slightly after correcting for gestational age, but the cohortspecific results are inconsistent.Observations with GA outside of the Intergrowth standards range (<168 or >300 days) were dropped for both the corrected and uncorrected data.Prevalence increased after GA correction in some cohorts owing to high rates of late-term births based on reported GA.There were no length measurements at birth in the Tanzania Child 2 cohort, so they do not have stunting estimates.There were 4,449 measurements used in the underweight analysis and 1,931 measurements used in the stunting analysis.Gestational age was estimates based on mother's recall of the last menstrual period in the IRC, CMC-V-BCS-2002 and Tanzania Child cohorts, and was based on the Dubowitz method (newborn exam) in the MRC Keneba cohort.

Fig. 1 |
Fig. 1 | Summaries of included cohorts.a, Number of observations (in thousands) across cohorts by age in months.b, Mean WLZ by age in months for each included cohort.Cohorts are sorted by geographical region and overall mean WLZ.The country and the start date of each cohort are included.

Fig. 3 |
Fig. 3 | Wasting incidence rate and recovery.a, Example child WLZ trajectory and wasting-episode classifications.The age of wasting onset was assumed to occur halfway between a measurement of WLZ < -2 and the previous measurement of WLZ ≥ -2.Recovery from an episode of wasting or severe wasting occurred when a child had measurements of WLZ ≥ -2 for at least 60 days, with the age of recovery assumed to be halfway between the last measurement of WLZ < -2 and the first measurement of WLZ ≥ -2.The dashed horizontal line marks the cutoff used for moderate wasting, -2 WLZ.b, Wasting incidence rate per 1,000 days at risk, stratified by age and region (overall: n = 510,070-822,802 person-days per estimate, Africa: n = 245,046-407,940 person-days; Latin America: n = 65,058-142,318 person-days; South Asia: n = 182,694-315,057 person-days).Insets are histograms of the number of wasting episodes per child by region, with the distribution mean (s.d.) printed within the plot.The median I 2 statistic measuring heterogeneity in each meta-analysis was 97 (IQR = 96-98) overall, 92 (IQR = 90-94) in Africa, 27 (IQR = 2-68) in Latin America and 91 (IQR = 87-94) in South Asia.c, Percentage of children who recovered from wasting within 30, 60 and 90 days of episode onset (n = 21 cohorts, 5,549 wasting episodes).The median I 2 statistic measuring heterogeneity in each meta-analysis was 78 (IQR = 66-80) overall, 82 (IQR = 76-87) in Africa, 1 (IQR = 0-31) in Latin America and 77 (IQR = 45-81) in South Asia.

Fig. 5 |
Fig. 5 | Co-occurrence of wasting, stunting and being underweight.a, Age-specific prevalence of concurrent wasting and stunting overall (n = 3,984-9,899 children) and stratified by region (Africa: n = 1,799-5,014 children; Latin America: n = 290-1,397 children; South Asia: n = 1,994-3,747 children).Vertical lines mark 95% CI for pooled means across study-specific estimates (grey points).The median I 2 statistic measuring heterogeneity in each meta-analysis was 91 (IQR = 79-94) overall, 84 (IQR = 72-90) in Africa, 31 (IQR = 0-42) in Latin America and 86 (IQR = 73-86) in South Asia.b, Percentage of children classified by different measures of growth faltering, alone or combined.Children classified as 'never faltered' had not previously been wasted, stunted or underweight.Children in the 'recovered' category were not wasted, stunted or underweight but had experienced at least one of these conditions previously.All children who were wasted and stunted were also underweight.Proportions in each category were calculated within cohorts, pooled using random effects and scaled so that the percentages added up to 100%.The number of children contributing to each age ranged from 3,920 to 9,077, with 11,409 children in total.

Fig. 2 |
Geographical location of Ki cohorts.Locations are approximate and jittered slightly for display.Extended Data Fig. 3 | Percentage of enrolled children measured in each Ki cohort with monthly measurements.Each coloured cell indicates the percentage of children with a WLZ measurement for a given cohort at a particular child age.Grey cells indicate that no children had a WLZ measurement for that age.Extended Data Fig. 4 | Comparison of cohort anthropometry to populationbased samples.a, Kernel density distributions of LAZ, WAZ and WLZ from measurements among children under 24 months old in 21 Ki longitudinal cohorts (coloured line) and among children measured in the most recent population-based DHS for each country (black).Sub-Saharan African countries are coloured blue, Latin American countries are coloured green and south Asian countries are coloured orange.Median z-scores are denoted with points under the density curves, with open circles for Ki cohorts and solid points for DHSs.b, Mean LAZ, WAZ and WLZ by age and country among 21 Ki longitudinal cohorts (dashed lines) and in DHSs (solid).Means estimated with cubic splines and shaded regions show approximate, simultaneous 95% CI.Each panel includes n = 117,664 children with LAZ, 117,783 children with WAZ, and 117,619 children with WHZ measured from DHS data and n = 11,442 children with LAZ, 11,443 children with WAZ, 11,407 children with WLZ measured from Ki cohorts.Extended Data Fig. 5 | Prevalence of persistent wasting, severe wasting and being underweight, wasting measurement frequency, and concurrent wasting and stunting by region.a, Prevalence of severe wasting (WLZ < -3) by age and region.b, Histograms of the proportions of visits at which children have wasted measurements, overall and stratified by region (20 bins at 5% binwidth).c, Proportion of children persistently wasted (≥50% of measurements from birth to 24 months of age, overall and stratified by region.d, Incidence proportion of concurrent wasting and stunting by age and region.Across all ages before 24 months, 10.6% of children experienced at least one concurrent wasted and stunted measurement.e, Prevalence of being underweight (WAZ < -2) by age and region.Extended Data Fig. 6 | Incidence of wasting by age and country characteristics.Proportion of children at different ages in months who experienced the onset of wasting episodes (a) by national health expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product (0-4.4%:n = 5 studies, n = 3,305 children; 4.5-5.5%:n = 5 studies, n = 2,697 children; >5.5%: n = 3 studies, n = 3,325 children); (b) by national percentage of individuals living on less than $1.90 US per day (0-18%: n = 5 studies, n = 2,818 children; 18-51%: n = 6 studies, n = 3,584 children; 51-100%: n = 2 studies, n = 3,381 children); (c) and by national under-5 mortality rate (<50 per 100,000: n = 6 studies, n = 2,743 children; 50-80 per 100,000: n = 3 studies, n = 3,952 children; >80 per 100,000: n = 3 studies, n = 3,611 children).The 'Birth' age category includes measurements in the first 7 days of life and the '0-3' age category includes ages from 8 days up to 3 months.Vertical bars indicate 95% CI from random-effects meta-analysis models with restricted maximum likelihood estimation, and grey points indicate cohort-specific estimates.Extended Data Fig. 7 | Comparison of the prevalence of being underweight and stunting at birth, with and without correction for gestational age.

Fig. 8 |
RTM effects in wasted children.a, Expected mean z-scores based on the RTM effect (orange) and observed mean z-scores (blue) three months after wasted children are measured.The lines connecting cohort-specific observed and expected WLZ at each age are coloured orange if the expected estimate under RTM was higher than the observed mean (indicating lower than expected change in WLZ under RTM alone), and blue if the observed mean was higher than the expected estimate under RTM (indicating higher than expected change in WLZ under RTM alone).For examples, most cohorts experienced larger increases in WLZ than expected in the threemonth period beginning in their first month of life (blue lines) and most cohorts experienced smaller increases in WLZ than expected in the three-month periods beginning at ages 6-9 months (orange lines).b, Difference between observed means and expected means under a pure RTM effect by cohort, with the median differences by age indicated with horizontal lines.Details on estimation of the RTM effects are in the Methods.Extended DataFig.9 | Duration of wasting episodes by child age and region.Duration of wasting episodes that began in each age category, overall (n = 787-1,940 episodes per age category) and stratified by region (Africa: 377-916 episodes, Latin America: n = 11-25 episodes, South Asia: n = 410-1,146 episodes).The 'Birth' age category includes measurements in the first 7 days of life and the '0-3' age category includes ages from 8 days up to 3 months.Estimates were pooled across cohorts using the median of medians method 60 .Vertical bars indicate 95% CI around the pooled estimates, and grey points indicate cohortspecific estimates.Episodes are assumed to start halfway between nonwasted and wasted measurements, and end halfway between the last wasted measurement and first recovered estimate.Birth episodes start at birth, so episodes at birth are generally shorter that post-birth episodes with the same number of wasted measurements.Extended Data Fig. 10 | Risk of growth faltering in the subsequent three months by whether a child was wasted or stunted at each age.Relative risk of wasting and stunting in the next three-month period among children who were wasted (right) or stunted (left) at each age.For example, children who were wasted at birth had an approximately twofold increased risk of wasting during the subsequent 0-3 month period, and children who were stunted at birth had an approximately fourfold increased risk of being stunted during the subsequent 0-3 month period.Points indicate relative risks and vertical lines mark 95% CI.Extended Data Fig. 11 | Month of birth affects seasonal patterns in WLZ.a, Mean WLZ by calendar month among South Asian cohorts, with children stratified by birth month.The x axis begins at 1 January of the year of the first January birthday in each cohort.Grey backgrounds indicate the approximate timing of seasonal monsoons in South Asia (June-September) Lines represent mean WLZ estimated using semiparametric cubic splines, and shaded regions around the means indicate simultaneous 95% CI.Eleven cohorts, 4,040 children and 78,573 measurements were used to estimate the splines.South Asian children born in July-September had the lowest mean WLZ overall and children born in April-September had larger seasonal declines in WLZ during their second year of life than children born October-March.b, Mean WLZ from birth to age 24 months among children from South Asian cohorts stratified by birth month.Lines represent mean WLZ estimated using semiparametric cubic splines, and shaded regions around the means indicate simultaneous 95% CI.Estimates were fit using the same data as in a.
The age of wasting onset was assumed to occur halfway between a measurement of WLZ < -2 and the previous measurement of WLZ ≥ -2.Recovery from an episode of wasting or severe wasting occurred when a child had measurements of WLZ ≥ -2 for at least 60 days, with the age of recovery assumed to be halfway between the last measurement of WLZ < -2 and the first measurement of WLZ ≥ -2.The dashed horizontal line marks the cutoff used for moderate wasting, -2 WLZ.The distribution of children's mean WLZ in the three months after recovery from wasting, with the IQR marked.The median WLZ is annotated, and grey points mark cohort-specific medians.Children wasted before the age of 6 months experienced larger improvements in WLZ compared with children who were wasted at older ages (P < 0.001).