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Background and Aim: Growth charts are widely used to assess children’s growth status and can provide a trajectory of growth during early important months of life. The objectives of this study were to construct centile reference charts for height-for-age for children aged 25 to 60 months and compare the results with the WHO reference. Materials and Methods: A total of 23644 apparently healthy boys and girls aged 25 to 60 months were recruited in July 2004 for 20 days from those attending community clinics for routine health checks. Anthropometric measurements were done by trained health staff using WHO methodology. The LMSP method with maximum penalized likelihood, the Generalized Additive Models, the BCPE distribution, the AIC and GAIC (3) criterion, and Worm plot and Q-tests as goodness of fit tests were used to construct the centile reference charts. Results: The height-for-age percentile curves for boys and girls aged from 25 to 60 months were derived utilizing a population of children living in the northeast of Iran. Among all age groups from 25 to 60 months, the median values of children living in the northeast of Iran were lower than the corresponding values in WHO reference data. The height curves of boys were higher than those of girls in all age groups. Conclusion: Significant differences between growth patterns of children living in the northeast of Iran versus international ones necessitate using local and regional standards and growth charts. International norms may not properly recognize the populations at risk for growth problems in Iranian children therefore, they may be misleading for our healthcare system.

Keywords: Centile curves, childhood, height, LMSP method, reference values

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