Construction of National Standards of Growth Curves of Height and Weight for Children Using Cross-sectional Data.

ABSTRACT

Objectives: Growth curves are the most important tools for the assessment of growth of children, which could further helps to develop preventive interventions. Geographical and physical differences necessitate using national growth curves. This study aims to construct growth curves using anthropometric measurements namely weight and height for Indian children using cross-sectional data from National Family and Health Surveys. Materials and Methods: Box- Cox power exponential, a flexible distribution, was used that offers to adjust kurtosis and improves the estimation of extreme percentiles. LMS-methods that fit skewed data adequately and generate fitted curves that follow closely the empirical data, with maximum penalized likelihood, Akaike information criteria (AIC) and generalized AIC with penalty 3 were used to construct the growth curves. Before fittings this model factors which influence the nutritional status of children were examined, similar to World Health Organization (WHO) (2006) factors, namely standard infant feeding practices, sanitation, non-smoking mothers additionally poverty (household consumable assets based). Results: Model fitted in LMS-model and standard based on height and weight for children aged 0–60 months was obtained after iteration for degrees of freedom for the parameters. Growth curves for mean Z-scores and percentiles were constructed for both sexes and significant lower values were noticeably found to be set as growth-standard compared to WHO-standards. Conclusion: Study showed the prospect of constructing regional/national growth curve and their need for the assessment of children’s growth, which could help to identify undernourished-children at national level. There is an urgent need to collect longitudinal data of children to fit the growth curve of children in India.