Objective: This study was undertaken to characterize the nutritional status, the status of growth and the relation to various factors in cerebral palsy.

Method: Forty patients with cerebral palsy (20 quadriplegia, 20 diplegia) were investigated. Information was obtained from medical record, clinical measure and anthropometric measure (weight for height, triceps skinfolds thickness per age, height for age). Values of weight for height or triceps skinfold below the 2.5 percentile were defined as "undernutrition", values of height for age below the 2.5 percentile were defined as "growth retardation". Denver Developmental Screening Test (DDST) at the 12 months old and at the examined time, oromotor score, pattern of defecation, duration of gait per day of patients were interviewed from caregivers. Spasticity was measured by using Modified Ashworth's scale.

Results: Eleven children (27.5%) were in undernutrition state and 9 (22.5%) growth retardation. Oromotor dysfunction was positive in 62.5% and constipation in 30%. Less gait time, more severe oromotor dysfunction and fine motor delay in DDST and more quadriplegic type (p＜0.05) were found in undernutrition group and no significant difference of spasticity and constipation. With logistic regression, quadriplegic type is the only significant factor to undernutrition.

Conclusion: Undernutrition is common in cerebral palsy and quadriplegic type is significantly related to undernutrition.

Familial hypophosphatemic ricket (Vitamin D-resistant ricket), first described by Albright in 1937, has been known to be transmitted as an X-linked dominant trait in most families. Children with this disease would show growth retardation with characteristic clinical features such as congenital alopecia, genu varum or genu valgum, coxa vara and waddling gait. Although the physical features associated with this disease have been documented frequently, the potential involvement of auditory pathway due to abnormal bone formation in skull has not been explored frequently.

We report a twenty six-month-old female child with familial hypophosphatemic ricket who presented abnormal findings of brainstem auditory evoked potential study. The impaired hearing function should be alerted as one of possible accompanying disabilities of the disease.