Nutritional status at diagnosis in children and adolescents with cancer in the Asociacion de Hemato-Oncologia Pediatrica de Centro America (AHOPCA) countries: preliminary results from Guatemala.

More than 50% of children with cancer in Guatemala have some degree of malnutrition at diagnosis. In particular, the proportions of patients with non-lymphoblastic leukemias and myelodysplasia (MDS) with moderate and severe malnutrition were 73% and 9% respectively; higher than that in the population with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), P = 0.0493. There was no relationship of nutritional status to gender. Children with ALL and other leukemias + MDS who had severe malnutrition were significantly younger than such malnourished children with solid tumors (P = 0.0003). The relationship of malnutrition to race was mixed, perhaps reflecting the frequent difficulty of accurately categorizing race. (c) 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.