Postnatal Growth

Clicking on a link in this section will take you directly to charts published by TNO, the Dutch Organization for Applied Scientific Research. These charts are copyrighted, but they may printed or otherwise downloaded for personal use. Because of copyright protection, we cannot save and translate the charts on this site. The notes below translate important words.

Important words:

• Hoofdomtrek: Head Circumference
• Lengte: Length/Height
• Gewicht: Weight
• Meisjes: Girls
• Jongens: Boys
• Maanden: Months
• Jaar: Years

A 2009 study measured grip strength in 225 children attending a primary school in Rotterdam (1). The children were aged 4 to 12 years. The paper is freely available in PubMed Central (see bottom of page for link); Figures 2 - 5 are curves of grip strength in the dominant and non-dominant hands of girls and boys.

Size at Birth by Gestational Age

The charts here were made from data in The Netherlands Perinatal Registry. Data was retrieved in 2001; the authors used all live singleton births in the database (~176,000 infants; 2). The study also compared birthweights for children in seven major ethnic groups in the Netherlands (Dutch, Mediterranean, Creole, Hindustani, Asian, Non-Dutch European, other). Birthweights were roughly the same among all groups except the Hindustani, which were somewhat lower. Separate data for Hindustani birthweights was included, but did not separate boys and girls.

Down syndrome

Ellis-van Creveld syndrome

The charts in this section come from an international study of growth in children with EVC (5). The children were of many different races and ethnicities, as follows:

• There were 101 children; 229 measurements were made
• 60 patients were Caucasian
• 15 were Hispanic
• 24 were of other backgrounds (African-american, Jewish, Turkish, Chinese, Mongolian, Japanese, Indian)
• 2 patients were of unknown ethnicity

Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome

An open-access study published in 2008 contains the following growth curves for children with Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome (6):

• Height, Birth to 4 Years (Boys, Girls)
• Weight, Birth to 4 Years (Boys, Girls)
• Head Circumference, Birth to 4 Years (Boys and Girls combined)

The study used ~1,050 examinations of 101 children with WHS. Thirty-two children lived in the Netherlands and 69 were from other areas (the UK, North America, Germany, and Australia). None of the children had taken growth hormones; apart from this requirements, there were other exclusion criteria. Thus, the study included children with medical problems that could have affected their growth, such as heart defects, kidney disease, or feeding problems. No size differences between Dutch and non-Dutch patients were observed.

References

1. 1. Molenaar HM et al. (2010) Growth diagrams for grip sin children. Clin Orthop Relat Res 468(1):217-223. Full text on PubMed.
2. 2. Visser GHA et al. (2009) New Dutch reference curves for birthweight by gestational age. Early Hum Dev 85(12):737-734. Abstract on PubMed.
3. 3. van Dommelen P et al. (2008) Growth references for height, weight and body mass index of twins aged 0-2.5 years. Acta Pædiatrica 97(8):1011-1104. Abstract on PubMed.
4. 4. Van Gameren-Oosterom HBM et al. (2012) Healthy growth in children with Down syndrome. PLoS ONE 7(2):e31079. Full text on PubMed.
5. 5. Verbeek S et al. (2011) Growth charts for children with Ellis-van Creveld syndrome. Eur J Pedatr 170(2):207-211. Full text on PubMed.
6. 6. Antonius T et al. (2008) Growth charts for Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome (0-4 years of age) Eur J Pediatr 167(7):807-810. Full text on PubMed.