Effect of nutritional rickets on the gross motor development of infants

ABSTRACT

To verify the role of rickets as a cause contributing to delays in the gross motor development of Infants, Design: Case-Control Study. Setting: The study was conducted in Al-Khansa Maternity and Children's Teaching Hospital in Mosul during the period from October 1997 to September 1998. Subjects: Fifty-nine infants under the age of 2 years with rickets who attended the out-patient clinic were studied Fifty-five non rachitic sex and age matched infants were selected as controls Data on the age, sex, feeding patterns, clinical presentations and gross motor developmental assessments were evaluated. The ages of all rachitic cases were under 2 years. No sex difference was found among rachitic Infants. Most of the cases [81.3%] were exclusively breast-fed, [13.5%] were on mixed diet and [5.1%] of the cases were bottle-fed. The most common clinical presentations were bronchopneumonia [22%] and gastroenteritis [20%]. More than half of the rachitic cases [54.2%] were delayed in their gross motor development while only [5.4%] of the controls were delayed. Males showed more delay than females [P< 0.01] with a sex ratio of 1.61 Rickets may be an important cause for delayed gross motor development in Infants