The Relationship Of Sociodemographic Factors And Children's Vitamin A Deficiency

BackgroundVitamin A deficiency is one of the major public health issue affecting human health. As the leading cause of blindness in children, the disorder has increased the morbidity and mortality of infectious diseases in child. In China, especially in underdeveloped areas, children are the main population affected by Vitamin A Deficiency. Socio-demographic factors essentially impact on children's food consumption, as a result, these factors impact on the morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency in children. There are few systematic research focusing on the relationship between social demographic factors and Vitamin A Deficiency in children in China.ObjectiveThis study aims to use the data of "Chinese residents nutrition and health survey in 2002", analyse the relationship between the demographic indicators and Vitamin A Deficiency in children, and explore the socia-economic determinants of this nutrition disorder, provide the reference for the nutrition intervention and evidence based decision-making as well.MethodResearch data originate from Chinese residents nutrition and health survey in 2002(abbreviated as Nutrition Survey in 2002). The samples are the children aged from 3 to 12 years old, and completing serological testing. The sample size is 13,462.Chi-square test and multivariate Logistic regression statistical analysis are used to identify the relationship between gender, age, parental ethnicity, parental occupation, parental education, number of household members, household income per person, urbanization level, area type and Vitamin A Deficiency in children, pinpoint the social demographic factors significantly affecting the children nutrition disorder.Results1. Statistic description of sampleIn this study, the number of the children whose serum Vitamin A is below 200μg/dL are 1085, accounting for 8.06% of the total sample.6885 boys and 6577 girls account for 51.14% and 48.66% respectively of the total number of sample.2.The relationship of demographic variables and Vitamin A Deficiency in childrenBoy's morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency is 8.35%, girl's morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency is 7.75%, there is no statistic difference between former and the latter.The morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency in children with minority father is 13.18%, higher than that (10.74%) in children with the father, whose ethnicity is Han. Chi-square test shows the statistically significance. Among them, the morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency in children with fathers, whose ethnicity are Yao and Zhuang, are 45.00% and 22.05% respectively, higher than that (10.74%) in children with father, whose ethnicity is Han. Chi-square test shows the statistically significance.The morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency in children with minority mather is 13.05%, higher than that (10.77%) in children with the mather, whose ethnicity is Han. Chi-square test shows the statistically significance. Among them, the morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency in children with mathers, whose ethnicity are Yao and Zhuang, are 50.00% and 21.895% respectively, higher than that (10.77%) in children with mather, whose ethnicity is Han. Chi-square test shows the statistically significance.The morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency in children with the fathers, who are the chargers of a unit, is 12.82%, slightly higher than the others, but there is no statistically significance. Different employment status of mothers have influence on the prevalence of Vitamin A Deficiency in children, in which, the children with the mothers stay at home unemployed or engaged in household chore suffer from morbidity of 12.01%, while the children with the clerk mothers have the lowest morbidity of 4.41 %, there is a significant gap between the two.The children with father whose education level are primary school and lower secondary have the relatively high morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency(10.90% and 11.63% respectively), but the difference is not significant.The children with mother, whose educational level is primary school, have the highest morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency, it is 11.83%; while the children with mother, whose educational level is college, have the lowest morbidity, it is only 2.20%. The morbidity rise as the mother's educational level rising. This trend is statistically significant.The children living in the household equal or less than 3 persons , have the lowest morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency, it is 5.10%. As the increasing of population in household the morbidity rise. Chi-square shows the trend statistically significant.The children who live in the family with the household income per person less than 800 Yuan, have the highest morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency( 13.49%), while the children live in the family with the household income more than 20000 Yuan, whose morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency is only 1.88%. With the household income increasing, the morbidity decreases significantly, according to the result of chi-square test.The morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency in Children in the city (2.38%) is significantly lower than that in county (11.19%).The children's morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency shows a considerable rising trend from 1.33% to 13.06% as the area type changes from one to six.According to the Non-conditional Logistic regression equation, the age of children (OR=0.879), mother being other ethnicity (OR=0.585), mother being Yao ethnicity (OR=6.158), mother being Zhuang ethnicity (OR=1.976), mother being Miao ethnicity (OR=0.422), mother with the occupation of agriculture and animal husbandry (OR=0.790), office worker (OR=0.208), technologist (OR=0.487), and area type (OR=1.305) are statistically significant relating to the morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency. These mean that: as age increasing, the morbidity decreases; the children whose mother's ethnicity are other ethnicity and Miao have the lower morbidity of Vitamin A Deficiency than the children whose mother's ethnicity are Han; the children whose mother's ethnicity are Yao and Zhuang have the higher morbidity than the children whose mother's ehtnicity are Han; if mothers are engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry , office worker, technologist, the children's morbidity are lower than that if mothers are engaged in housework; and as the local economic status degrading, the morbidity shows a trend of increasing. ConclusionsInsufficient intake of food rich in vitamin A is the direct reason that cause Vitamin A Deficiency in children, while as the most important category of socio-economic determinants, the social demographic variables essentially influence the food consumption and nutrients absorption of children in ChinaIn the single-factor analysis, age, parents of ethnic status, mother's occupational status and educational level, household size, household income per person, degree of urbanization, as well as the area type impact the prevalence of Vitamin A Deficiency in children. While the multi-factor Logistic regression analysis shows that only four demographic variables (age, mother's ethnicity, mother's occupation and area type) enter the equation. This could be caused by the limitation of Logistic regression and the correspondence between the variety of demographic factors. These demographic determinants may act on the health services, acute and chronic diseases, these public health issues will also cause the child malnutrition, especially the Vitamin A Deficiency in children.Based on the conclusion of this study, the intervention of Vitamin A Deficiency in children should be integrative and comprehensive for different socio-demographic populations and settings, being expected to be cost-effective sustainabe.