Open AccessCross-sectional study of child and adolescent growth in Ecuador
Author(s) -
Wilmer Tarupi,
Yvan G. Lepage,
Roland Hauspie,
María L Felix,
Claude Monnier,
J. Campbell,
Mathieu Roelants,
Ricardo Hidalgo,
Martine Vercauteren
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
revista argentina de antropología biológica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1853-6387
pISSN - 1514-7991
DOI - 10.24215/18536387e006
Subject(s) - overweight , ethnic group , body mass index , demography , public health , population , geography , maturity (psychological) , construct (python library) , growth curve (statistics) , index (typography) , environmental health , medicine , gerontology , psychology , political science , developmental psychology , statistics , mathematics , sociology , nursing , pathology , law , programming language , world wide web , computer science
Child growth is internationally recognized as an important indicator for monitoring health in populations. There exists a wide controversy regarding the use of international growth standards versus local references. This study seeks to construct reference growth curves for school-age Ecuadorian children and adolescents, and to compare them with World Health Organization (WHO) standards, in order to identify the differences and their public health implications. The study authors enrolled 2891 children (1644 girls and 1247 boys) aged 5 to 18 years, from a variety of climatic zones and ethnic groups. LMS method was used to construct Ecuadorian curves for height, weight and Body Mass Index. Comparisons of Ecuadorian and WHO curves were graphically illustrated. U.S children were taller than Ecuadorian children across all age ranges, with larger differences between the two populations in children over 13 years. Consequently, estimates of low height and extremely low height, as well as overweight, obese and undernourished, were significantly different between WHO standards and the Ecuadorian references. Population-specific growth curves may be more adequate for growth monitoring of Ecuadorian children than WHO growth curves. We advocate for the construction of an Ecuadorian growth reference for clinical use based on national population, from conception to maturity, as an accurate instrument for monitoring growth.