Nutritional Status of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, Cerebral Palsy and Down Syndrome: A Scoping Review

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), Down Syndrome (DS) and Cerebral Palsy (CP) are the most common disabilities among children. Nutritional status assessment is important as these children are at risk of underweight, overweight or obesity. Therefore, the objectives of this review were to identify evidence on the prevalence of nutritional status of children with DS, CP and ASD, and to determine tools and indicators to measure the nutritional status of these children. Methods: This scoping review was conducted using a framework suggested by Arksey and O'Maley. A comprehensive search was performed to identify published and unpublished works, reviews, grey literature and reports. Inclusion criteria for the search were articles in English published from 1990 to 2014 and related to children with ASD, DS and CP. Titles, abstract, and keywords for eligibility were examined independently by the researchers. Results: A total of 305,268 titles were extracted from electronic databases and other resources. Based on the inclusion criteria, 21 articles were selected for review. The prevalence of overweight or obese children with DS ranged from 33.5% to 43.5%. The prevalence of underweight children with CP was 22.2% to 78.2%. Children with ASD at a younger age were more likely to be overweight or obese compared with normal developing children. The common nutritional indicators used were z-scores for weight-for-age, height-for-age, body mass index-for-age, and head circumference-for-age. Conclusions: Overall, there is emerging evidence on the nutritional status of children with ASD, DS and CP although this is still very limited in developing countries including Malaysia. The evidence shows that children with CP were at risk of being underweight, while children with DS and ASD were at risk of being overweight or obese.