Background: Due to the secular trend in length and height, growth references need to be updated regularly. Reference charts that were until recently used in Belgium are based on samples collected m...

References for growth and pubertal development from birth to 21 years in Flanders, Belgium.

Human adult height has been increasing world-wide for a century and a half. The rate of increase depends on time and place of measurement. Final height appears to have reached a plateau in Northern European countries but it is still increasing in southern European countries as well as Japan. While mean birth length has not changed recently in industrialized countries, the secular trend finally observed in adult height mostly originates during the first 2 years of life. Secular trend in growth is a marker of public health and provides insights into the interaction between growth and environment. It has been shown to be affected by income, social status, infections and nutrition. While genetic factors cannot explain such rapid changes in average population height, epigenetic factors could be the link between growth and environment.

Secular trends in growth.

Many researchers and professionals need to be able to measure, assess and interpret human growth between birth and adulthood. However, much of the methodology is scattered in diverse literature. Human Growth: Assessment and Interpretation provides a complete reference to the field for all those who measure and assess child growth. It emphasises the interpretation of growth data taking into account the adjusted effects of influences such as genes, hormones and substance abuse during pregnancy, gives descriptions of normal and abnormal growth patterns, and of variant growth patterns such as failure-to-thrive and catch-up growth. Including methods to measure size and maturity, the judgement and interpretation of recorded data, evaluations of influences on growth and the significance of abnormal growth, it will be an essential source of information for pediatricians, human biologists, health workers, nutritionists, epidemiologists and others who are responsible for the health and welfare of children.

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Human Growth: Assessment and Interpretation

Longitudinally based height velocity centiles for U.S. children, appropriate for paediatric clinical use, were derived for growth from ages 7 to 18 years. A series of gender- and race-specific figures present the median velocity curves for children by year of maturation. Smooth 3rd to 97th centile curves, for blacks and whites together, are provided for children who are early, average, and late maturers. The data were taken from 6532 black and white children participating in the Six Cities Study from 1974 to 1989.

Longitudinal height velocity standards for U.S. adolescents

The aim of this study is to quantify the genetic and environmental variation in biological parameters of the adolescent growth in stature in both sexes, using structural equation models. Standing height was measured in 99 twin pairs from the Leuven Longitudinal Twin Study. Subjects were seen at semi-annual intervals between 10 and 16 years and at 18 years. Preece-Baines model I was fitted to the individual data and biologically meaningful parameters were derived. Path models were fitted to these parameters and a gender heterogeneity analysis was performed. A model including additive genetic and specific environmental factors (AE-model), allowing for a difference in total variance or in genetic/environmental variance components in males and females best explains most of the growth characteristics. For the timing and velocity of the adolescent growth spurt, no gender heterogeneity was observed, and the genetic (0.89 to 0.93) and specific environmental (0.07 to 0.11) contributions were equal in both sexes. F...

Genetic variance of adolescent growth in stature

The present paper presents the first clinical standard for growth in height of Belgian boys and girls, based on purely longitudinal data. Growth charts are provided with centiles of height for age along with growth curves of the typical early, average and late maturing child in the population. These new standards show the classical features of cross-sectional standards, but above that, they also provide information about the variability in individual growth patterns, as a result of variation in maturation. Average adult height is 176.6 cm (SD=6.3 cm) in boys and 163.3 cm (SD=5.7 cm) in girls. The representativity of these new standards with respect to the actual Belgian population has been by comparison with recent cross-sectional data, collected on a large number of subjects. These standards should be applied in all situations where interest lies in the evaluation of the normality of a child's growth pattern over some length of time and will therefore find their usefulness in clinical follow-up studies of growth.

A. Wachholder

Papers

Clinical standards for growth velocity in height of Belgian boys and girls, aged 2 to 18 years