Rama Kawade Material and methods Participants The study was conducted in two secondary schools from Pune City, Maharashtra State, in Western India, during 2005 2007. In all, 662 girls participated in the study. A physician conducted clinical examinations to assess health status of the girls. Exclusion criteria Girls who were currently suffering or those who had suffered the previous fortnight from any illness such as fever, respiratory or gastro-intestinal infections or those undergoing medical treatment or taking multi-vitamin mineral supplements as per a physician’s recommenda- tion were excluded. Thirty-two girls who met the exclusion criteria were excluded. Thus in all, 630 apparently healthy girls aged 10 16 years from the participating schools were recruited for the study. Prior permission of the school authorities was taken to conduct the study in schools. Details of the procedures involved in the study were explained to the parents. After giving consent, girls were informed about the protocol of the study. The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the ethics committee of Zensar Foundation of India, Pune, under the chairmanship of a retired professor of the International Institute of Population Sciences, Mum- bai. All of the parents gave their written informed consent, and the girls voluntarily participated in the study. Outcome measures Diet was assessed by 24-hour recall method on three random days including Sunday. Diet patterns were identified by principal component analysis. Nutrient intakes were estimated using cooked foods database (53) and nutritive value tables (54). Venous blood samples (10 ml) were collected at 7.30 am after an overnight fast for each girl. Haemoglobin (Hb) was estimated using Automated Cell counter (ActDiff II, Beckman Coulter, Fullerton, CA, USA). Serum ferritin was estimated by Fully Automated Bidir- ectionally Interfaced Chemi Luminescent Immuno Assay. Plasma levels of zinc, vitamin C, b-carotene and retinol were measured as per the methods in the manual by National Institute of Nutrition, India (55), and erythro- cyte zinc was measured as per the method described by Kenny et al. (56). Reference serum (RANDOX Laboratories, India) was used as a standard for blood estimations. Cognitive performance was evaluated using a group of four tests standardised on Indian children; Simple Reac- tion Time (SRT), Recognition Reaction Time (RRT), Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM) and visual Memory 4 (page number not for citation purpose) on each participant (57 59). SRT and RRT measure the cognitive speed concerning perception, processing and motor response organisation for reaction tasks and visual search. SRT and RRT were measured using a visual reaction time apparatus (Anand Agencies, Pune, India) designed as per the procedure given by Woodworth et al. (57). RPM is a nonverbal test of performance that measures a person’s ability to form perceptual relations and reason by analogy in research settings and form comparisons (58). A short-term visual memory test was carried out for measuring the ability of the girls to retain and reproduce information within a short time span. This test was adopted from the subtest of PGI memory scale developed by the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India, for children and adolescents (59). Taste acuity was assessed by identifying recognition threshold for salt (RTS) using 10 different salt solutions ranging from 0 to 25 mmol/l (40). More details of the measurements and methods used in the study are presented in five research papers (60 64). Results and discussion Average age, weight, height and body mass index of the girls were 12.2191.11 years, 33.0597.22 kg, 143.749 8.24 cm and 15.8192.62 kg/m2, respectively. Twenty- four percent of the girls were below the 5th percentile and 2.1% were above the 85th percentile of the Indian reference BMI for age (65). Family size of the girls ranged from 2 to 11 persons in the household, with an average of 592 persons. Amongst fathers, 84.4% worked as salaried employees and the remaining were self-employed. Parents’ educational sta- tus indicated that 13.8% of the fathers and 9.0% of the mothers completed high school, and 18.7% of the fathers and 13.2% of the mothers completed a college education. Nutrient profile and functional indices of zinc in adolescent girls The mean intake of energy and protein was 13739381 kcal/d and 30.499.6 g/d, respectively. Comparison with age sex-specific reference intake indicated that these intakes were 68.7 and 60% of recommendation (24). Average calcium, iron, b-carotene and vitamin C intakes were 2899146, 6.992.3, 6199564 and 25.6914.5 mg/d, respectively. Thus, average intakes of micronutrients were 30 60% of the respective RDI, indicating dietary defi- ciencies of these minerals and vitamins in the girls. The present study has offered estimates of prevalence of dietary micronutrient deficiencies in Indian urban ado- lescent girls, which are in agreement with previous findings on rural Indian adolescents (13, 16) and avail- able studies on urban slum adolescents (14, 15). However, data on zinc intake are missing in these studies and the Citation: Glob Health Action 2012, 5: 7353 - DOI: 10.3402/gha.v5i0.7353