This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

William T. Basco, Jr, MD
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine 600 N Wolfe St/CMS 144 Baltimore, MD 21218-3144

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1997;151(3):322.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Binns et al¹ in the August 1996 ARCHIVES show that a cohort of Chicago-area children were heavier at birth and throughout the first 6 months of life compared with the cohort measured for the current standard curves, generated by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and in use since 1977.² Their study correctly highlights the need to ensure that our "standards" are still appropriate.

The differences in growth curves noted in this study raise an unresolved issue: pediatricians should reflect on what we wish to consider "normal" human growth patterns before generating new standardized growth curves. The authors mention that the "majority of infants" in their study "were breast-fed," while the infants in the NCHS cohort were mostly formula-fed. This difference in feeding does provide a possible explanation for some of the variation between the populations, since a US study involving exclusively breast-fed infants3 has found that . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?