Changes in weight and height among Chinese preschool children during COVID-19 school closures.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: COVID-19-related school closures may increase the prevalence of childhood obesity, which has aroused public concerns. We aimed to analyze the weight and height changes in Chinese preschool children during the COVID-19-related school closures period. METHODS: A total of 124,603 children from multi-city kindergartens in China were included in this study. We evaluated the prevalence of overweight and obese in preschool children experienced school closures, and compared the changes in BMI, weight, and height of preschool children among COVID-19 school closures period, the same period last year and the same period the year before last. RESULTS: After the school closures, childhood obesity prevalence increased, whereas overweight prevalence decreased. During school closures, the average increase in height was about 1 cm less as compared with the same period last year and the year before last, but no noteworthy difference in the weight change was observed among the three periods. CONCLUSIONS: During COVID-19 school closures, children's height increase seemed to be more affected than weight change. Innovative, robust, and highly adaptable strategies should be taken to increase physical activity, reduce sedentary time and promote healthy diets, to minimize the adverse impact of school closures.

The long-run heterogeneous effects of a cholera pandemic on stature: Evidence from industrializing Japan.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic poses the general question on how infectious diseases can persistently affect human health. A growing body of literature has found a significant amount of evidence on the long-term adverse effects of infectious diseases, such as influenza, typhoid fever, and yellow fever. However, we must be careful about the fact that little is known about the long-term consequences of the acute diarrheal disease pandemic cholera - Vibrio cholerae bacillus - which still threatens the health of the population in many developing countries. To bridge this gap in the body of knowledge, we utilized unique census-based data on army height at age 20 in early 20th-century Japan, with a difference-in-differences estimation strategy using regional variation in the intensity of cholera pandemics. We found that early-life exposure to a cholera pandemic had heterogeneous stunting effects on the final height of men; the magnitude of the stunting effects increased as the intensity of exposure increased.