[Parental and childhood height development. Corrected percentile standards for German children between the age of 2 and 9]

Abstract

The conventional centile standards allow a judgement of children's height according to age-groups. It is equally important, however, to take the parental height into consideration. In 1970 Tanner ascertained for the British population the correlation between children's height and the mid-parent height (i.e. the average of father's and mother's height). From these results he set up centile standards that allow the judgement of children's height at successive ages in terms of the mid-parent height. Several conditions should be fulfilled for their application within other populations: identical correlation coefficients of parents' and children's heights which were shown in Tanner's international study; the accordance of the average height and the standard deviations, respectively, of children in each of the age groups as well as the conformity of the mid-parent height. Our investigations showed that the 3 parameters which were last mentioned differed from those of the British population. Therefore, proper standards for correction were set up. The calculations were worked out for children at ages 2 to 9 years. The methodical procedure will be shown in detail. The correction standards allow a statement as to whether the height of a child can be classified as normal or not within the framework of his family. This is particularly advantageous in regards to the diagnostic clarification of short stature, since it is often due to constitutional, genetic factors; if, for example, according to age the height of a five-year-old boy as well as the mid-parent height coincide at the 3rd centile, then the child's height centile will be 32nd. in consideration of these hereditary components. So the differential diagnosis of genetic short stature is made considerably more straightforward by the use of the present charts.