Food consumption and nutritional status evaluation of children with atopic dermatitis

Abstract

Background: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is an inflammatory allergic skin disease that often requires glucocorticosteroid therapy. Due to recurrent association with food allergy, dietary intake of these children might be an important concern. The aim of this study was to evaluate food ingestion and nutritional status in children with moderate to severe AD compared with a control group. Method: We evaluated 60 children with atopic dermatitis and 54 healthy controls (HC), aged from 4 to 12 years old. Food ingestion was evaluated within 3 days 24-h food recalls. The dietary intake was evaluated according to the standards set by the American Institute of Medicine (2010), Dietary References Intake – DRIs, for calcium and vitamin D, and by the National Academy of Sciences Research Council (1989), named Recommended Dietary Allowance – RDA, for proteins and calories. The nutritional status was evaluated according to height to age z-score, weight for age z-score and body mass index (BMI) z-score, folowing the World Health Organization child growth standards (2006). Result: Results are described in Table 1. Dietary intake evaluation showed a tendency of less consumption of calories in the AD group ( P = 0.061), although both groups had an adequate consumption of calories. It was interesting to notice that in both groups there was an exceeding amount of proteins consumed compared to the standard recommendations, even though there was no statistical difference between groups. There was a statistically significant difference considering fat consumption (P< 0.05), children with AD consumed more fat than HC. Most of the AD patients consumed <80% of the dietary recommendations for calcium and vitamin D. In the subgroup of children who had also cow’s milk allergy the consumption of calcium was lower than 27%. Children with AD were smaller than HC children, according to the height for age z- score for nutritional status evaluation. Conclusion: Children with AD had a high ingestion of proteins and a low consumption of calcium and vitamin D. The AD children had a decrease in the Z-score of height for age.