Parental perceptions of body weight and appetite in infants and toddlers with cystic fibrosis

Appetite. 2024 Apr 13:107357. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2024.107357. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTNutritional status has clinical relevance and is a target of guidance to parents of children with cystic fibrosis (CF). Growth is routinely monitored in CF clinics but there is no standardized way of assessing appetitive behaviors or parents' perceptions of their children's appetite. Greater understanding of these factors could improve clinical guidance regarding parent feeding behaviors. We therefore aimed to assess parent perceptions of child weight, and parent reports of child appetite using the Baby Eating Behavior Questionnaire (BEBQ), in a sample of infants and toddlers with CF, compared with a community sample. We additionally assessed relationships of parent perceptions of child weight with parent feeding behaviors in the sample with CF. Anthropometric and questionnaire data were collected for 32 infants and toddlers with CF, as well as 193 infants and toddlers drawn from RESONANCE, a community cohort study. Parents perceived children with CF to be lower in weight than their actual weight, to a greater extent than was evident in the community sample. Parents who perceived their children with CF to be underweight vs. right weight reported greater slowness in eating on the BEBQ. Parents perceived children with CF to have greater slowness in eating and lower enjoyment of food, compared to parents of children in the community sample, independent of sample differences in child wei...
Source: Appetite - Category: Nutrition Authors: Source Type: research