Perímetros braquial y cefálico como indicadores de pobreza y enfermedad diarreica aguda en ni？os menores de 5 a？os, en Bogotá

objective: to assess the relationship between nutritional status and some factors related with poverty (acute diarrhea and overcrowding) in children less than 6 years of age in bogotá methods: acommunity-based, cross-sectional study, was conducted during 2000 in the urban area of bogotá, using a household interview survey.3 081 adults having in their homes children under five years were interviewed. this number of participants was calculated to obtain a representative sample of the city for estimating a binomial population parameter. a multistage sampling was carried out. the sample size was reduced to 2 833 with the elimination of cases missing scores on dependent variables (dvs). cephalic and brachial perimeters (continuous variables), used as a proxy of nutritional status (dvs), were selected as the main outcome measures. a 2 x 2 x 2 multivariate analysis of variance was performed on two dvs. independent variables were overcrowding (as a measure of marginalization) and recent acute diarrhea. the analyses included sequential adjustment for nonorthogonality. results: dvs showed a low correlation (r=0.3) and a symmetric distribution. evaluation of assumptions of linearity and multicollinearity were satisfactory. the omnibus test, using wilk's criterion, showed that combined dvs were significantly affected by recent acute diarrhea (f=9.65 p=0.000), age less than 1 year (f=350.81 p=0.000) and the interaction acute diarrhea - over-crowding (f=6.25 p=0.000). in order to evaluate the impact of each main effect on the individual dvs, a roy-bargmann stepdown analysis was carried out. homogeneity of regression was achieved for all components of the stepdown analysis. the brachial perimeter has a unique contribution to predict recent acute diarrhea (roy-bargmann f1,1=13.1 p=0.000). the cephalic perimeter has a unique contribution to predict acute diarrhea and over-crowding (roy-bargmann f1, 1 = 10.22 p=0.001). conclusions: recent acute diarrhea and overcrowding are related w