The purpose of the study was to examine geographic relationships of nutritional status (BMI), including underweight, overweight and obesity, among Kenyan mothers and children.

Spatial relationships were examined concerning BMI of the mothers and BMI-for-age percentiles of their children. These included spatial statistical measures of the clustering of segments of the population, in addition to inspection of co-location of significant clusters.

Rural and urban areas of Kenya, including the cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, and the Kisumu region.

Mother–child pairs from Demographic and Health Survey data including 1541 observations in 2003 and 1592 observations in 2009. These mother–child pairs were organized into 399 locational clusters.

There is extremely strong evidence that high BMI values exhibit strong spatial clustering. There were co-locations of overweight mothers and overweight children only in the Nairobi region, while both underweight mothers and children tended to cluster in rural areas. In Mombasa clusters of overweight mothers were associated with normal-weight children, while in the Kisumu region clusters of overweight children were associated with normal-weight mothers.

These findings show there is geographic variability as well as some defined patterns concerning the distribution of malnutrition among mothers and children in Kenya, and suggest the need for further geographic analyses concerning the potential factors which influence nutritional status in this population. In addition, the methods used in this research may be easily applied to other Demographic and Health Survey data in order to begin to understand the geographic determinants of health in low-income countries.

Hyperosmotic stress on cells limits many aspects of cell function, metabolism and health. International data suggest that schoolchildren may be at risk of hyperosmotic stress on cells because of suboptimal water intake. The present study explored the cell hydration status of two samples of children in the USA.

Cross-sectional study describing the urine osmolality (an index of hyperosmotic cell shrinkage) and water intake of convenience samples from Los Angeles (LA) and New York City (NYC).

Each participant collected a urine sample at an outpatient clinic on the way to school on a weekday morning in spring 2009. Each was instructed to wake, eat, drink and do as usual before school, and complete a dietary record form describing the type and amounts of all foods and beverages consumed after waking, before giving the sample.

The children (9–11 years) in LA (n 337) and NYC (n 211) considered themselves healthy enough to go to school on the day they gave the urine sample.

Elevated urine osmolality (>800 mmol/kg) was observed in 63 % and 66 % of participants in LA and NYC, respectively. In multivariable-adjusted logistic regression models, elevated urine osmolality was associated with not reporting intake of drinking water in the morning (LA: OR = 2·1, 95 % CI 1·2, 3·5; NYC: OR = 1·8, 95 % CI 1·0, 3·5). Although over 90 % of both samples had breakfast before giving the urine sample, 75 % did not drink water.

Research is warranted to confirm these results and pursue their potential health implications.

To investigate the vitamin D status during winter of a healthy population of hospital employees and to assess the correlation between vitamin D status and risk of infections in the upper respiratory tract.

One hundred and ten healthy volunteers answered a questionnaire on their solar exposure habits and vitamin D intake and delivered one blood sample for quantification of vitamin D level (serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) concentration) during December 2007–January 2008. At the end of the winter we screened for the occurrence of respiratory infections and sought associations with vitamin D status.

Bucharest, Romania, 45°N.

One hundred and ten healthy hospital employees.

Eighty per cent of participants were vitamin D deficient (25(OH)D level below 50 nmol/l). The main determinant of serum 25(OH)D was sun exposure during the summer previous to the study (P = 0·02 in multivariate analysis). Intake of vitamin D, BMI and age played no significant role for the level of 25(OH)D. Overall we found a non-significant negative correlation between 25(OH)D level and new cases of infection (Spearman correlation coefficient of −0·12, P = 0·2).

Vitamin D status is alarmingly poor in active, relatively young women residing in Romania. If our results are reproduced by other investigations, action to improve vitamin D status at the population level is necessary. We were not able to show a statistically significant relationship between vitamin D status and infection risk in our material.