Contaminated food hinders children's growth, study shows

Eating food contaminated with aflatoxins hampers the growth and development of children in Benin and Togo, scientists from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria, and the University of Leeds, UK, reported in a study published this month. The researchers, whose findings were published in the 6 July issue of the British Medical Journal, studied nearly 500 children aged nine months to five years from 16 villages in the two West African countries. They found that children who ate foods contaminated with aflatoxins showed the type of stunted growth usually associated with malnutrition. According to the scientists, aflatoxin is a toxic by-product of moulds that grow on crops such as maize and groundnuts when these are stored in hot, humid conditions. Such conditions, they noted, were often found in storage bins of small farmers throughout West Africa, where maize and groundnuts are food staples. "The blood of 475 out of 480 children contained elevated levels of aflatoxin [and] revealed a strong correlation between how much aflatoxin was in their blood and how much they were below normal, both in height and weight," the scientists said. Their paper, titled 'Dietary aflatoxin exposure and impaired growth in young children from Benin and Togo: A cross sectional study', was conducted with the approval of the ministries of health of the two countries and the children's parents, the scientists said. Weight-for-age, height-for-age and weight-for-height scores were determined according to World Health Organisation references. "The early childhood environment, including the nutritional status of the pregnant mother and the infant, are critical for growth and risk of disease in later life," the scientists noted. "Many people in developing countries are not only malnourished but also chronically exposed to high levels of toxic fungal metabolites. High exposure to aflatoxins occurs throughout childhood in West Africa." The study, funded by the German development agency, BMZ, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in the USA, is available at http://bmj.com/content/vol325/issue7354/