Weight-for-length/height growth curves for children and adolescents in China in comparison with body mass index in prevalence estimates of malnutrition

Abstract

Background: It is important to update weight-for-length/height growth curves in China and re-examine their performance in screening malnutrition.

Aim: To develop weight-for-length/height growth curves for Chinese children and adolescents.

Subjects and methods: A total of 94 302 children aged 0–19 years with complete sex, age, weight and length/height data were obtained from two cross-sectional large-scaled national surveys in China. Weight-for-length/height growth curves were constructed using the LMS method before and after average spermarcheal/menarcheal ages, respectively. Screening performance in prevalence estimates of wasting, overweight and obesity was compared between weight-for-height and body mass index (BMI) criteria based on a test population of 21 416 children aged 3–18.

Results: The smoothed weight-for-length percentiles and Z-scores growth curves with length 46–110 cm for both sexes and weight-for-height with height 70–180 cm for boys and 70–170 cm for girls were established. The weight-for-height and BMI-for-age had strong correlation in screening wasting, overweight and obesity in each age–sex group. There was no striking difference in prevalence estimates of wasting, overweight and obesity between two indicators except for obesity prevalence at ages 6–11.

Conclusion: This set of smoothed weight-for-length/height growth curves may be useful in assessing nutritional status from infants to post-pubertal adolescents.

Keywords:

• Weight-for-height
• weight-for-length
• growth curve
• body mass index
• malnutrition

Acknowledgements

We thank all staff participating in the NSPGDC and the CNSSCH in 2005 for their carefully measuring and collecting of data in the fields. We thank Professor Chengye Ji (Institute of Child and Adolescent Health, School of Public Health, Peking University) for allowing us access to the nine provinces/municipalities data of the 5th CNSSCH and for providing insight and comments for constructing the China growth reference values. We thank Professor Jie Mi (Department of Epidemiology, Capital Institute of Pediatrics) for providing the test population for comparing prevalence estimates of malnutrition between WFH and BMI criteria.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.