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Biomedical subjects

B Bogin

Publications and source records attributed to B Bogin.

16 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1997

Plasticity, political economy, and physical growth status of Guatemala Maya children living in the United States.

Migration of Maya refugees to the United States since the late 1970s affords the opportunity to study the consequences of life in a new environment on the growth of Maya children. The children of this study live in Indiantown, Florida, and Los Angeles, California. Maya children between 4 and 14 years old (n = 240) were measured for height, weight, fatness, and muscularity. Overall, compared with reference data for the United States, the Maya children are, on average, healthy and well nourished. They are taller and heavier and carry more fat and muscle mass than Maya children living in a village in Guatemala. However, they are shorter, on average, than children of black, Mexican-American, and white ethnicity living in Indiantown. Children of Maya immigrants born in the United States tend to be taller than immigrant children born in Guatemala or Mexico. Families that invest economic and social resources in their children have taller children. More economic successful families have taller children. Migration theory and political economy theory from the social sciences are combined with plasticity theory and life history theory (parental investment) from biology to interpret these data.

Black or African American↗
PubMed1992

Longitudinal analysis of adolescent growth of ladino and Mayan school children in Guatemala: effects of environment and sex.

The rate of growth in height and the timing of adolescent growth events are analyzed for two samples of Guatemalan children. One sample includes Mayan school children, 33 boys and 12 girls between the ages of 5.00 to 17.99 years, living under poor conditions for growth and development. The second sample includes ladino children, 78 boys and 85 girls of the same age range, living under favorable conditions for growth. The Preece-Baines model I function is used to estimate mean values for rates and timing of childhood and adolescent growth events for the two groups. Significant statistical contrasts (t-tests) of these means show Mayan boys reach the age of "take-off" (TO; the onset of the adolescent growth spurt) 1.45 years later, achieve peak height velocity (PHV) 1.68 years later, and continue growing for about 2.0 years longer than do the ladino boys. Despite the Mayan boys' increased duration for growth they grow significantly more slowly than the ladinos. Mayan boys are 6.60 cm shorter than ladinos at the age of TO and are estimated to be 7.71 cm shorter than the ladinos at adulthood. Mayan girls reach the age of TO 0.93 years later than do the ladina girls, but the two groups do not differ in the age at PHV or the age at adulthood. The mean height of Mayan girls is significantly less than that of ladinas at the age of TO (6.5 cm), and this difference increases to an estimated 11.14 cm at adulthood. Possible causes of these ethnic and sex-related differences in amounts and rates of growth are discussed in relation to hypotheses about the genetic and environmental determinants of human development.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1987

Growth status, age, and grade as predictors of school continuation for Guatemalan Indian children.

Schooling is considered by many researchers and agencies as an important contributor to individual and national development for populations living in the less developed countries. Accordingly, programs to increase school enrollment and continuation from grade to grade are being developed for many of these countries. This paper investigates the relationship of physical growth status (height, weight, and body composition), grade in school, and age to school continuation for a sample of Indian children living in a village near Guatemala City. It was found that physical growth status, a reflection of health and nutritional status, does not predict school continuation. A child's age and current grade in school do predict continuation. Most children leave school after reaching 9 years of age or after completing the second grade. It is suggested that children may learn enough to satisfy their parents' expectations by this age or grade. Also, the child's economic value to his or her family may be a significant reason for school drop-out.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1986

Socioeconomic status, sex, age, and ethnicity as determinants of body fat distribution for Guatemalan children.

The distribution of subcutaneous fat at the triceps and subscapular skinfold sites is described for four groups of children living in Guatemala. These groups are high socioeconomic status (SES) children of Ladino (mixed Spanish and Indian) ancestry, high SES children of European ancestry, low SES Ladino children, and very low SES Indian children. The method of Healy and Tanner (1981) is used, employing regression and principal components analysis of log transformed skinfold values to divide "fatness" into two uncorrelated variables: size (amount of fat) and shape (fat pattern). Significant differences exist between groups in size, with lower SES groups having less fat than higher SES groups. No significant difference in fat pattern exists between the high SES Ladino and high SES European children. Significant differences do exist between the high SES groups and the low SES groups. The relative amount of subscapular fat increases from the high SES Ladinos and high SES Europeans, to the low SES Ladinos, to the very low SES Indians. In the high SES European and high SES Ladino samples, girls have significantly more arm fat than boys. There is no significant difference in fat patterning between boys and girls in the two low SES samples. Finally, the relative amount of subscapular fat tends to increase with age in all four samples. These results indicate that fatness and fat patterning are independent anatomical characteristics, SES influences fat patterning; low SES children of both Ladino and Indian ancestry show greater reductions in arm fat than in trunk fat compared to high SES children, sexual dimorphism in fat patterning is SES dependent.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Adipose Tissue↗
PubMed1983

The relationship of socioeconomic status and sex to body size, skeletal maturation, and cognitive status of Guatemala City schoolchildren.

Longitudinal data from a study of child development in Guatemala City were used to describe the influence of socioeconomic status and sex on physical and cognitive growth status. The correlation between the growth status variables was also analyzed. The sample included 144 Guatemalan children, 46 of low SES, 52 of middle SES, and 46 of high SES. The children were students in 5 urban primary schools. 3 physical variables, height, weight, and skeletal age, were measured annually from first to sixth grade. Two cognitive variables, general intelligence and reading ability, were measured in grades 1, 3, 4, or 5. Significant differences between SES groups existed for all variables. However, the differences in each grade were greater for the cognitive measures than for the physical measures. Compared with high SES children, middle SES boys and low SES boys and girls experienced significantly greater delayed growth in height than in weight or skeletal age. It is possible that these height delays may result in a permanent reduction in stature. The only consistently significant sex-related difference was for skeletal age; girls were more mature than boys in each grade. When SES was statistically controlled, there was no significant correlation between physical and cognitive growth status for girls and only a few moderate but statistically significant correlations for boys.

Age Determination by Skeleton↗
PubMed1982

Ethnic and secular influences on the size and maturity of seven year old children living in Guatemala City.

Three groups of children, those of European parentage, those of Guatemalan parentage, and those of mixed European-Guatemalan parentage were measured for height, weight, and skeletal maturity. The children were born between 1945 and 1965, they were all of high socioeconomic status, and they all attended the same private school in Guatemala City. At 7 years, the boys of the European group were significantly taller than boys of the Guatemalan group. European and mixed European-Guatemalan girls were significantly taller than Guatemalan girls. These results are maturity independent. The influence of skeletal age was removed statistically by analysis of covariance. Girls of the mixed group were significantly heavier than girls of European and Guatemalan groups. Mixed group girls also had more significantly advanced skeletal ages than European girls. When the patterns of size and maturity status are analyzed by sex, there is evidence for a relatively greater environmental influence on the boys and a relatively greater genetic influence on the girls. Dividing the data into two birth year cohorts, 1945 to 1955, and 1956 to 1965, does not provide evidence for secular trends in growth or maturation. These results are similar to those from studies in developed nations that report an end to the secular trend for the "well off" population of those countries.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1981

Body composition and nutritional status of urban Guatemalan children of high and low socioeconomic class.

The effects of socioeconomic differences on the nutritional status of two groups of urban living children are considered via an anthropometric assessment of body composition. The sample consists of 981 Guatemala City children, 7.00 to 13.99 years old. Of high and low socioeconomic status (SES). High SES children have larger median values for triceps skinfold, subscapular skinfold, arm circumference, and estimated mid-arm muscle and fat areas than low SES children. Compared with children of a US reference sample, the high SES children generally have larger values for all variables and the low SES children have smaller values. However, the differences between the low SES children and the children of the other two samples are greater for arm fat area than for arm muscle area. The analysis suggests that low SES Guatemalan children suffer to a greater extent from chronic energy, rather than protein, undernutrition. A similar pattern of energy malnutrition has been observed for rural Guatemalan children. These combined data suggest that estimates of fat reserves of the arm provide a useful indication of nutritional status for Third-World children. Results from rural Costa Rican and Honduran studies have been taken to mean that muscle reserves are better than fat reserves as indicators of nutritional status in developing countries. But, those studies did not estimate cross-sectional muscle and fat areas and only considered the extremes of the population distribution for muscle and fat.

Adipose Tissue↗
PubMed1981

Biosocial effects of urban migration on the development of families and children in Guatemala.

The relationship between rural to urban migration and child growth and family structure is reported in sample of 302 children from families of low socioeconomic status, living in Guatemala City. The sample was divided into three groups: 1) children of parents born outside the city, 2) children of parents born in the city, and 3) children with one migrant and one city-born parent. Children of migrants to the city were the smallest and significantly shorter than children of migrant city-born parents. Migrant parents also had the largest families; family size correlated negatively with growth in height. Growth in weight followed a pattern similar to height, but no significant differences associated with migration status were found between groups.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1979

Monthly changes in the gain and loss of growth in weight of children living in Guatemala.

Monthly increments of weight growth for a sample of 246 Guatemala City private school children are analyzed for the presence of a seasonal pattern in rates of growth. Neither a seasonal pattern nor any other periodic rhythm is found. It is observed that a significantly greater number of children aged 5.0 to 6.9 years experience their minimum annual growth rate during the dry season, with up to 60% of them losing or not gaining weight in any one month. Patterns of diet, exercise and disease cannot explain this trend. A possible association between minimum weight growth and maximum growth in height is discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Measurement of growth variability and environmental quality in Guatemalan children.

The measurement of within-population growth variability may be a sensitive indicator of environmental quality. Specifically, it is hypothesized that within-population variability will increase in adverse environments. To evaluate this hypothesis the variability in stature growth of three samples of Guatemala school children (5-10 years old) is assessed. These samples include high socioeconomic status (SES) ladinos (84 boys and 98 girls) and low SES ladinos (136 boys and 101 girls) living in Guatemala City and very low SES Mayan Indians (139 boys and 73 girls) living in a rural town near the city. SES is used as a proxy for environmental quality. The coefficient of variation (CV) for distance achieved at each age, or for the increment of growth from age to age, is used as the measure of variability. The three samples differ significantly for variability in stature growth, both for the distance and the increments of growth. Low SES urban ladinos have the largest variability. Very low SES Mayan children have coefficients of variation that are sometimes equal to, and sometimes either larger or smaller than, CVs for the high SES ladinos. The results show that degree of environmental adversity does not correlate uniformly with growth variability. Factors such as rates of infant and early childhood mortality and the greater heterogeneity of the low SES urban environment, compared with the high SES urban or low SES rural environments, may account for differences in the CV in these three samples.

Child↗