Patterns of physical growth in a longitudinal study of young children in rural Bangladesh

Longitudinal field studies of the physical growth of 197 children between 6 and 60 months of age have been completed in 2 rural villages of Bangladesh. The distribution of weights by age indicated that 90% of the village girls and boys weighed less than the National Center for Health Statistics 5th percentile by 8 and 15 months of age, respectively. Of the children 90% were shorter than the reference population 10th percentile length by age 10-13 months of age. Since the children's patterns of growth differed from those of the reference populations from North America and Europe, internal standards were created for the village girls and boys by fitting curves to their data for weight by age, length by age, arm circumference by age, triceps skinfold thickness by age, and weight by length. The village references enabled age-independent comparisons of children within the study population by relating their actual anthopometric status to the village norms. Comparisons of the village standards with the international reference data showed the period of poorest nutritional status of the village children persisted from shortly after birth to approximately 2 yr of age.