An effective intervention to reduce the prevalence of anaemia in children.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to S Seshadri.
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1. Behavioural responses of young anaemic Indian children to iron-folic acid supplements were assessed in two separate studies using the Indian adaptation of Wechsler's (1967) intelligence scale for children (WISC). 2. The first study was an exploratory study in which the cognitive behaviour of 5-8-year-old children of both sexes was assessed before and after supplementation with 20 mg elemental Fe and 0.1 mg folic acid given daily for a period of 60 d. 3. The supplemented children showed a significant improvement in haemoglobin (Hb) as well as the WISC scores while the control children who did not receive any supplements failed to show an improvement either in Hb or in the WISC scores. However, within the supplemented group when the initially-anaemic children were compared with the initially-non-anaemic ones, only the 7-year-old anaemic children performed significantly poor in the tests than the non-anaemic group of the same age. The study raised the possibility that in addition to increasing the blood Hb levels, Fe-folic acid supplements may have additional benefits in improving the cognitive performance of children. 4. In the second study, cognitive behaviour of fourteen matched pairs of anaemic children in the age-range of 5-6 years was assessed before and after supplementation with 40 mg Fe and 0.2 mg folic acid given daily in two divided doses or sugar placebos for a period of 60 d. The tester did not know the groups to which each child belonged. 5. The supplemented children showed a significant improvement in Hb as well as in the verbal and performance IQ of WISC. The control children showed no improvement in Hb but their verbal IQ improved significantly. However, there was no significant improvement in their performance IQ. 6. The results indicated that Fe-folic acid supplements to anaemic children not only raised Hb levels but also improved intelligence test results, particularly in the performance section.
The incidence of disease is estimated in medical and public health applications using various different techniques presented in the statistical and epidemiologic literature. Many of these methods have not yet made their way to popular statistical software packages and their application requires custom programming. We present a macro written in the SAS macro language that produces several estimates of disease incidence for use in the analysis of prospective cohort data. The development of the Practical Incidence Estimators (PIE) Macro was motivated by research in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) in the Framingham Study in which the development of AD has been prospectively assessed over an observation period of 24 years. The PIE Macro produces crude and age-specific incidence rates, overall and stratified by the levels of a grouping variable. In addition, it produces age-adjusted rates using direct standardization to the combined group. The user specifies the width of the age groups and the number of levels of the grouping variable. The PIE macro produces estimates of future risk for user-defined time periods and the remaining lifetime risk conditional on survival event-free to user-specified ages. This allows the user to investigate the impact of increasing age on the estimate of remaining lifetime risk of disease. In each case, the macro provides estimates based on traditional unadjusted cumulative incidence, and on cumulative incidence adjusted for the competing risk of death. These estimates and their respective standard errors, are provided in table form and in an output data set for graphing. The macro is designed for use with survival age as the time variable, and with age at entry into the study as the left-truncation variable; however, calendar time can be substituted for the survival time variable and the left-truncation variable can simply be set to zero. We illustrate the use of the PIE macro using Alzheimer's Disease incidence data collected in the Framingham Study.
The short-term in-patent facility of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Unit in the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore is described. Its clientele over one year is reviewed. Totally 152 admissions were made. Hysterical neurosis (30.8%), Psychoses (25.2%), Conduct disorder (10.5%) and Hyperkinetic syndrome (9.8%) were the most common diagnoses observed in this population who needed short-term intervention. Average duration of stay was 4-12 weeks. All children were admitted with a parent. In 95.8% of the cases the treatment expenses were borne partially/fully by the hospital. The policy and functioning of the facility is discussed.