Growth in height and its association with overweight and obesity in Mexican children: an evaluation based on a nationally representative sample (ENSANUT 2018)

Luis Alberto Flores, Sudip Datta Banik, Noel Cameron, Isabel Januário Fragoso

Front. Public Health, 07 March 2024
Sec. Children and Health
Volume 12 - 2024.

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1339195

The present study aimed to estimate the height growth curve for Mexican boys and girls based on their body mass index (BMI) status (normal and overweight/obese) and to develop a height Lambda, Mu, and Sigma (LMS) growth reference for Mexican children aged 2 to 18  years.

Methods: Chronological age and height records (7,097 boys and 6,167 girls) were obtained from the Mexican National Survey of Health and Nutrition database. Height growth curves were fitted using the Preece-Baines 1 (PB1) model and the LMS method.

Results: Age at peak height velocity (APHV) was 12.4 and 12.7  years for overweightobese and normal-weight boys, respectively, and was 9.6 and 10.4  years for overweight-obese and normal-weight girls, respectively. Growth velocity was higher at the age of take-off (TO) in overweight-obese children than in normalweight children (5.2  cm/year vs. 5  cm/year in boys and 6.1  cm/year vs. 5.6  cm/year in girls); nevertheless, the growth velocity at APHV was higher for normalweight children than for overweight-obese children (7.4  cm/year vs. 6.6  cm/year in boys and 6.8  cm/year vs. 6.6  cm/year in girls, respectively). Distance curves developed in the present study and by the World Health Organization (WHO) using LMS showed similar values for L and S parameters and a higher M value compared with the WHO reference values.

Conclusion: This study concluded that overweight-obese children had earlier APHV and lower PHV than normal-weight children. Furthermore, Mexican children and adolescents were shorter than the WHO growth reference by age and sex.