BMJ 1996;313:1486 (7 December)

Letters

Sex differences in weight in infancy

Published centile charts for weight have been updated

EDITOR,--Charlotte M Wright and colleagues report a discrepancy between the sexes in weight in infancy1 when the British 1990 growth reference2 was used to standardise the weights of infants in Newcastle upon Tyne. They suggest that this arises from a bias in the growth reference rather than a regional difference in growth.

We looked for a possible regional effect in a cohort of 7400 babies from West Sussex, who were measured between birth and 35 weeks (courtesy of Dr Ann Wallace). As in Newcastle, there was no sex difference in the standard deviation score for weight at birth, but thereafter the boys' weight centiles tended to exceed the girls' (by a mean score of 0.31, compared with 0.41 in the authors' study). Thus regional differences alone are unlikely to explain the finding, and a bias in the growth reference must exist. We . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Sex differences in weight in infancy and the British 1990 national growth standards
Charlotte M Wright, Sally S Corbett, and Robert F Drewett
BMJ 1996 313: 513-514. [Abstract] [Full Text]

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