{"doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-36350/v2","title":"Socio-emotional and adaptive behaviour in children treated for severe anaemia at Lira Regional Referral Hospital, Uganda: a prospective cohort study.","abstract":"Abstract Background: Severe anaemia is a global public health challenge commonly associated with morbidity and mortality among children <5 years of age in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, less is known about the behavioural performance of children < 5 years surviving severe anaemia in low resource settings. We investigated social-emotional and adaptive behaviour in children < 5 years diagnosed with severe anaemia in Northern Uganda. Methods: We conducted a hospital based prospective cohort study among children 6 - 42 months who were treated for severe anaemia (n=171) at Lira Regional Referral Hospital, Uganda. Socio-emotional and adaptive behaviour were assessed 14 days post discharge using the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, 3 rd edition. Age-adjusted z-scores for each domain were calculated using scores from healthy community children (n=88) from the same environment for each age category. Multiple linear regression was used to compare z-scores in the social-emotional and adaptive behaviour scales between the two groups after adjusting for weight-for-age z-score, social economic status, mother’s education, father’s education and father’s employment on all the scales. Results: Compared with healthy community controls, children with severe anaemia had poorer [adjusted mean scores (standard error)], socio-emotional [-0.29, (0.05) vs. 0.01, (0.08), P=0.002]; but not overall/ composite adaptive behaviour [-0.10, (0.05) vs. -0.01, (0.07), P=0.343]. Within the adaptive behaviour subscales, children with SA displayed significantly poorer scores on the community use [adjusted mean score (standard error)], [-0.63, (0.10) vs. -0.01, (0.13), P<0.001]; and leisure [-0.35, (0.07) vs. -0.02, (0.07), P=0.036] skills. Conclusion: This study suggests that severe anaemia in children < 5 years is associated with poor social-emotional scores in the short-term post clinical recovery in Northern Uganda. We recommend long-term follow-up to determine the course of these problems and appropriate interventions to reduce the behavioural burden among children <5 years surviving severe anaemia in Uganda.","journal":"Research Square (Research Square)","year":2020,"id":134153,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9534,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":269837,"name":"Robert O. Opoka","orcid":"0000-0003-3240-2058","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":466931,"name":"John M. Ssenkusu","orcid":"0000-0003-0499-5642","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":381411,"name":"Noeline Nakasujja","orcid":"0000-0002-8163-4376","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":269834,"name":"Chandy C. John","orcid":"0000-0002-1634-1411","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":469155,"name":"Paul Bangirana","orcid":"0000-0002-7136-0594","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":520609,"name":"Andrew Sentoogo Ssemata","orcid":"0000-0003-0060-0842","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":42,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:16:24.540681Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}