MULT: New height references and their efficiency in multi‐ethnic populations

• Published in: American journal of human biology Vol. 35; no. 5; pp. e23859 - n/a
• Main Authors: Oliveira, Mariane Helen, Araújo, Joana, Ramos, Elisabete, Conde, Wolney Lisboa
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken, themA John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.05.2023; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adolescents; Body Height; Body Mass Index; Body Weight; Child; Child, Preschool; Cohort Studies; Comparative analysis; Correlation analysis; Correlation coefficient; Correlation coefficients; Disease control; Epidemiology; Female; Growth Charts; Humans; Longitudinal Studies; Male; Minority & ethnic groups; Nutrition assessment; Nutritional Status; Populations; Reference Values; S curves
• ISSN: 1042-0533; 1520-6300; 1520-6300
• DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.23859

Objectives To develop new height references (MULT) based on longitudinal data of multi‐ethnic populations and to compare them to the height references from the Dutch Growth Study, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and from the World Health Organization (WHO). Methods The MUL height references were developed through the LMS method and the Generalized Additive Models for Location Scale and Shape. They were constructed based on 2611 subjects (15 292 measurements) from the advantaged quintile of the Young Lives (Younger Cohort), Millennium Cohort Study, Adolescent Nutritional Assessment Longitudinal Study, and Epidemiological Health Investigation of Teenagers in Porto studies. The M, S curves were described to compare the growth trajectory of the MULT, DUTCH, CDC and WHO height references. For the population comparative analysis, we used the total sample of the studies (91 063 observations, 17 641 subjects). The Lin's concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) and Cohen's kappa coefficient (K) were used to verify the agreement between MULT, WHO and CDC height references. Results The MULT height references showed taller boys for the periods of 61–174 months and 196–240 months and taller girls for 61–147 and 181–240 months, when compared to CDC and WHO height references. There was an almost perfect agreement between WHO and MULT height references (CCC >0.99) for the subjects aged 2 to 5 years. Conclusions MULT height references presented a taller population and a high agreement with WHO growth charts, especially for children under 5 years, indicating that it could be useful to assess nutritional status of multi‐ethnic populations.