[Not Available].

The World Health Organization (WHO), in collaboration with a number of research institutions worldwide, is developing new child growth standards. As part of a broad consultative process for selecting the best statistical methods, WHO convened a group of statisticians and child growth experts to review available methods, develop a strategy for assessing their strengths and weaknesses, and discuss methodological issues likely to be faced in the process of constructing the new growth curves. To select the method(s) to be used, the group proposed a two-stage decision-making process. First, to select a few relevant methods based on a list of set criteria and, second, to compare the methods using available tests or other established procedures. The group reviewed 30 methods for attained growth curves. Using the pre-defined criteria, a few were selected combining five distributions and two smoothing techniques. Because the number of selected methods was considered too large to be fully tested, a preliminary study was recommended to evaluate goodness of fit of the five distributions. Methods based on distributions with poor performance will be eliminated and the remaining methods fully tested and compared.

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PubMed2005

[Growth and dietary intake among children with previous cow's milk allergy].

BACKGROUND: Approximately 2-3% of children develop allergy or intolerance to cow's milk and many of them go on a milk-free diet for a long time. Few studies have been done on growth and dietary intake among these children. MATERIAL AND METHODS: 28 children aged 6-10 who had recovered from cow's milk allergy, divided into groups "low-milk" and "ad lib milk", were compared with a control group of 32 children of same age. Growth rates from age one and dietary intake at present age based on four days weighed dietary assessment were used. RESULTS: Among the allergic children at ages 6-10, 50% had developed tolerance to cow's milk protein, while 35% used some dairy products. A totally milk-free diet was kept by 15%; these children were excluded from the study. The children with allergy had low body weight and height at ages one, two and four and at the present age compared with the controls. The energy intake was the same in both groups. The total sample had higher intake of sugar and lower intake of vitamin D than the recommended values. The 35% of children with restricted intake of cow's milk had lower intake of calcium, riboflavin and protein. The 50% of children with ad lib intake of milk products had a diet that differed little from that of the non-allergic children. INTERPRETATION: There is a need for further studies on growth, dietary intake and development of tolerance that could give health workers better knowledge for dealing with this group of children.

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