Standardized percentile curves of weight for age of Iranian Children under 5 years that living in the northeast of Iran (1383)

Growth charts are widely used to monitor childhood growth. Racial differences necessitate using local growth charts. This study was designed to provide standardized growth curves of weight for northeast Iranian children, and compare them to the WHO reference. A total of 67558 apparently healthy boys and girls aged 0 to 60 months recruited in July 2004 for 20 days from those attending community clinics for routine health checks. The selected cohort was an 11% sample of preschool boys and girls were born in Khorasan. Anthropometric measurements were done by trained health staff using WHO methodology. The LMSP method with maximum penalized likelihood, the Generalized Additive Model, the BCPE distribution, the AIC and GAIC (3) criterion, and the Worm plot and Q-tests as goodness of fit tests were used to construct the centile reference charts. Derived centiles were compared with WHO reference data. Sex-specific centile curves of weight for age of boys and girls aged from 0 to 60 months were derived recruiting a population of big khorasan province in the northeast of Iran. Among all age groups from birth to 60 months the median values of Iranian children were lower than corresponding values in WHO reference data. The differences were more dominated after the age of 24 months. Similarly, the weight curves of boys were higher than girls in all age groups. Significant differences between growth patterns of Iranian children versus international ones necessitate using local and regional standards and growth charts. International norms may not properly recognize population at risk for growth problems in Iranian children and therefore they may be misleading for our healthcare system.