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The WHO’s Child Growth Standards Increase Prevalence of Overweight among Young Children Compared to CDC’s Growth Chart
Author(s) -
Goodell Lora Suzanne,
Wakefield Dorothy,
Ferris Ann
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.21.6.a1047-c
Subject(s) - overweight , underweight , percentile , growth chart , medicine , demography , pediatrics , obesity , birth weight , environmental health , pregnancy , mathematics , statistics , sociology , biology , genetics
The WHO recently released Child Growth Standards (CGS) to provide an international standard for assessing growth. This study evaluated the differences between the CDC’s growth charts (GC) and CGS to determine overweight (OW) in young children. All medical encounters from birth of 520 randomly selected children 3 years of age were reviewed. None were exclusively breastfed past 2 weeks postpartum. Using both GC and CGS, researchers calculated percentiles weight‐for‐length at birth, 4 months, and 1 year, and BMI percentiles at 24–38 months. Researchers used CDC guidelines to assign BMI category. According to GC, 11% of children were underweight (UW), 59% were normal weight (NW), 59% were at risk for OW (AROW) and 26% were OW. Yet, when using CGS, 6% of children were UW, 50% were NW, 18% were AROW and 26% were OW. Forty‐two percent of GC UW children shifted to NW with CGS, 23% of NW shifted to AROW, and 74% of AOW shifted to OW, representing a significant difference (p < 0.001) between the two standards. Since CGS inflates overweight prevalence compared to GC, researchers and healthcare professionals using CGS should exercise caution when referencing past overweight prevalence reports using GC as an assessment tool. Additionally, these results emphasize the need to develop evaluation standards for CGS for US children. (Funding: USDA National Needs Fellowship, USDA/NRI Seed Grant #2002‐35200‐12227)