Background & aims: The risk of childhood obesity, an increasingly prevalent problem worldwide, might be predictable by early body mass index measurements. This study sought to develop body mass index and weight-for-length ratio references for infants born at 33-42 weeks gestation and to validate these data against the growth curves of the World Health Organization Multicenter Growth Reference Study.
Methods: Data were collected from the Neonatal Registry of Rabin Medical Center for all healthy singleton babies born live at 33-42 weeks gestation. Crude and smoothed reference tables and graphs for body mass index and weight-for-length ratio by gestational age were created for males and females, separately.
Results: Birth weight, length, and body mass index percentiles for full-term neonates were similar to the World Health Organization study, reinforcing the generalizability of our reference charts for infants born at 33-42 weeks. Cutoff values for small for date (<5th, <10th percentile) and large for date (>85th, >95th percentile) infants differed across gestational ages in both pre-term and full-term infants.
Conclusions: As body proportionality indexes provide an assessment of body mass and fatness relative to length, we suggest that BMI and Wt/L ratio percentiles be added to weight and length growth curves as a routine intrauterine growth assessment at birth.
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