Current MUAC Cut-Offs to Screen for Acute Malnutrition Need to Be Adapted to Gender and Age: The Example of Cambodia.

Abstract

BACKGROUND:Early identification of children 5 yrs. Therefore, this study aimed at defining gender and age-specific cut-offs to improve sensitivity of MUAC as an indicator of acute malnutrition. METHODS:To establish new age and gender-specific MUAC cut-offs, pooled data was obtained for 14,173 children from 5 surveys in Cambodia (2011-2013). Sensitivity, false positive rates, and areas under receiver-operator characteristic curves (AUC) were calculated using wasting for children 80% with the new cut-offs in comparison with the current WHO cut-offs. CONCLUSION:Gender and age specific MUAC cut-offs drastically increased sensitivity to identify children with WHZ-score <-2 z-scores. International reference of MUAC cut-offs by age group and gender should be established to screen for acute malnutrition at the community level