Size at Birth by Gestational Age

The curves below were created using data in study of ~1,700 Zambian infants born in the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka in 1982 and 1983 (1). The authors included singletons without congenital problems born to non-diabetic mothers of Zambian ancestry. Most graphs combine data for infants of both sexes; To facilitate comparison of birthweight, we have included a line for the mean weight of African-American newborns of both sexes (2) in the Weight section. Similarly, we have created a line for the mean length and head circumference; data for African-American infants was not available, and we used data from ~1,300 infants of Sub-Saharan African origin who had been born in Spain (3).

References

1.  1. Bhat GJ et al. (1989) Anthropometric Parameters of Zambian Infants at Birth. J Trop Ped  35:100-104. Abstract on PubMed.
2.  2. Oken E et al. (2003) A nearly continuous measure of birth weight for gestational age using a United States national reference. BMC Pediatrics  3:6.   doi: 10.1186/1471-2431-3-6. Full text on PubMed.
3.  3. Copil A et al. (2006) Patrones antropométricos de los recién nacidos a término de grupos étnicos de raza no caucásica procedentes de África subsahariana, Marruecos y Sudamèrica nacidos en Cataluña. An Pediatr (Barc)  65(5):454-460. Full text available from publisher.