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Original Research
Effects of biscuit-type feeding supplementation on the neurocognitive outcomes of HIV-affected school-age children
  1. Kek Khee Loo1,
  2. Shemra Rizzo2,
  3. Qiaolin Chen3,
  4. Robert E. Weiss4,
  5. Catherine A. Sugar4,5,
  6. Grace Ettyang6,
  7. Judith Ernst7,
  8. Goleen Samari8 and
  9. Charlotte G. Neumann9
  1. 1. Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, Department of Pediatrics, 1526 Edgemont Street, 5th Floor, Los Angeles, CA, USA
  2. 2. Department of Statistics, University of California, Riverside, 1438 Olmsted Hall, 900 University Avenue, Riverside, CA, USA
  3. 3. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, One Health Plaza, 337/A03.3C, East Hanover, NJ, USA
  4. 4. Department of Biostatistics, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, 650 Charles Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA, USA
  5. 5. Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
  6. 6. School of Public Health, Moi University, P.O. Box 4606, Eldoret, Kenya
  7. 7. Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Indiana University School of Health and Rehabilitation, Coleman Hall, CF 224, 1140 W. Michigan Street, Indianapolis, IN, USA
  8. 8. Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, 305 E. 23rd Street, Stop G1800, Austin, TX, USA
  9. 9. Department of Community Health Sciences, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, 650 Charles Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA, USA
  1. Corresponding Author: Kek Khee Loo, MD Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, Department of Pediatrics, 1526 Edgemont Street, 5th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90027, USA E-mail: kloo{at}ucla.edu

a randomized, double-blind, controlled intervention trial in Kenya

Abstract

Objective To determine if meat or soy protein dietary supplementation will enhance the neurocognitive performance of HIV-affected children at-risk of malnutrition and food insecurity.

Methods A randomized, double-blind, controlled intervention trial evaluated the effect of nutritional supplementation on the neurocognitive outcomes of 49 HIV-affected school-age children in western Kenya. The intervention consisted in providing the mother, target child, and siblings with one of three isocaloric biscuit-type supplements – soy, wheat, or beef – on 5 days per week for 18 months. Neurocognitive outcomes of the target children were assessed by a battery of eight measures and followed up longitudinally for up to 24 months.

Results Mixed effects modeling demonstrated significant differences in the rates of increase over time among all three groups (F test degrees of freedom of 2, P<0.05) for Raven’s progressive matrices performance, but not for verbal meaning, arithmetic, digit span backward, forward, and total, embedded figure test, and Beery visual-motor integration scores.

Conclusion HIV-affected school-age children provided with soy protein supplementation showed greater improvement in nonverbal cognitive (fluid intelligence) performance compared with peers who received isocaloric beef or wheat biscuits. Soy nutrients may have an enhancing effect on neurocognitive skills in HIV-affected school-age children.

  • Neurocognition
  • neurodevelopment
  • malnutrition
  • HIV
  • nutrition
  • Africa
  • animal source foods
  • meat
  • soy
  • proteins

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.15212/FMCH.2017.0130

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