• William Checkley, Lisa M Thompson, Sheela S Sinharoy, Shakir Hossen, Lawrence H Moulton, Howard H Chang, Lance Waller, Kyle Steenland, Ghislaine Rosa, Alexie Mukeshimana, Florien Ndagijimana, John P McCracken, Anaité Díaz-Artiga, Kalpana Balakrishnan, Sarada S Garg, Gurusamy Thangavel, Vigneswari Aravindalochanan, Stella M Hartinger, Marilú Chiang, Miles A Kirby, Aris T Papageorghiou, Usha Ramakrishnan, Kendra N Williams, Laura Nicolaou, Michael Johnson, Ajay Pillarisetti, Joshua Rosenthal, Lindsay J Underhill, Jiantong Wang, Shirin Jabbarzadeh, Yunyun Chen, Victor G Dávila-Román, Luke P Naeher, Eric D McCollum, Jennifer L Peel, Thomas F Clasen, and HAPIN Investigators.
• From the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care (W.C., S.H., K.N.W., L.N.), the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Non-Communicable Disease Research and Training (W.C., S.H., K.N.W., L.N., E.D.M.), the Eudowood Division of Pediatric Respiratory Sciences, School of Medicine (E.D.M.), and the Program in Global Disease Epidemiology and Control, Department of International Health, Bloomberg School of Public Health (W.C., L.H.M., E.D.M.), Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda (J.R.) - both in Maryland; Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing (L.M.T.) and the Hubert Department of Global Health (S.S.S., U.R.), the Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health (K.S., T.F.C.), and the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics (H.H.C., L.W., J.W., S.J., Y.C.), Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, and the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics (J.P.M.) and Environmental Health Science (L.P.N.), College of Public Health, University of Georgia, Athens - both in Georgia; the Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London (G.R.), and Nuffield Department of Women's and Reproductive Health, University of Oxford, Oxford (A.T.P.) - both in the United Kingdom; Eagle Research Center, Kigali, Rwanda (A.M., F.N.); the Center for Health Studies, Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, Guatemala City, Guatemala (J.P.M., A.D.-A.); the Indian Council of Medical Research Center for Advanced Research on Air Quality, Climate, and Health, Department of Environmental Health Engineering, Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai, India (K.B., S.S.G., G.T., V.A.); the Latin American Center of Excellence in Climate Change and Health, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (S.M.H.), and the Biomedical Research Unit, Asociación Benéfica Prisma (M.C.) - both in Lima, Peru; the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston (M.A.K.); Berkeley Air Monitoring Group (M.J.) and the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, University of California at Berkeley (A.P.) - both in Berkeley; the Cardiovascular Imaging and Clinical Research Core Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis (L.J.U., V.G.D.-R.); and the Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins (J.L.P.).
• N. Engl. J. Med. 2024 Jan 4; 390 (1): 445444-54.

BackgroundHousehold air pollution is associated with stunted growth in infants. Whether the replacement of biomass fuel (e.g., wood, dung, or agricultural crop waste) with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking can reduce the risk of stunting is unknown.MethodsWe conducted a randomized trial involving 3200 pregnant women 18 to 34 years of age in four low- and middle-income countries. Women at 9 to less than 20 weeks' gestation were randomly assigned to use a free LPG cookstove with continuous free fuel delivery for 18 months (intervention group) or to continue using a biomass cookstove (control group). The length of each infant was measured at 12 months of age, and personal exposures to fine particulate matter (particles with an aerodynamic diameter of ≤2.5 μm) were monitored starting at pregnancy and continuing until the infants were 1 year of age. The primary outcome for which data are presented in the current report - stunting (defined as a length-for-age z score that was more than two standard deviations below the median of a growth standard) at 12 months of age - was one of four primary outcomes of the trial. Intention-to-treat analyses were performed to estimate the relative risk of stunting.ResultsAdherence to the intervention was high, and the intervention resulted in lower prenatal and postnatal 24-hour personal exposures to fine particulate matter than the control (mean prenatal exposure, 35.0 μg per cubic meter vs. 103.3 μg per cubic meter; mean postnatal exposure, 37.9 μg per cubic meter vs. 109.2 μg per cubic meter). Among 3061 live births, 1171 (76.2%) of the 1536 infants born to women in the intervention group and 1186 (77.8%) of the 1525 infants born to women in the control group had a valid length measurement at 12 months of age. Stunting occurred in 321 of the 1171 infants included in the analysis (27.4%) of the infants born to women in the intervention group and in 299 of the 1186 infants included in the analysis (25.2%) of those born to women in the control group (relative risk, 1.10; 98.75% confidence interval, 0.94 to 1.29; P = 0.12).ConclusionsAn intervention strategy starting in pregnancy and aimed at mitigating household air pollution by replacing biomass fuel with LPG for cooking did not reduce the risk of stunting in infants. (Funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; HAPIN ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT02944682.).Copyright © 2024 Massachusetts Medical Society.

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