TY  - JOUR
A1  - Maqsood, Arusa
A1  - Naumenko, Daniel J.
A1  - Hermanussen, Michael
A1  - Scheffler, Christiane
A1  - Groth, Detlef
T1  - No correlation between short term weight gain and lower leg length gain in healthy German children
JF  - Journal of biological and clinical anthropology : Anthropologischer Anzeiger ; Mitteilungsorgan der Gesellschaft für Anthropologie
N2  - Background:
Length-for-age is considered the indicator of choice in monitoring the long-term impact of chronic nutritional deficiency. Aim: We hypothesized that short term increments of body weight cross-correlate with increments of the lower leg length. 

Sample and methods: 
We re-analyzed the association between weekly measurements of weight and of lower leg length in 34 healthy German children, aged 2.9-15.9 years. The data are a subset of measurements originally published in 1988 (Hermanussen et al. 1988a). As the growth measurements were often not equally spaced in time due to interposed holidays and illness, the incremental rates for weight and lower leg length were smoothed using spline functions. Autocorrelation and cross-correlation functions were calculated for weight increments and lower leg length increments.

Results:
Height and weight increments are pulsatile. Autocorrelations indicated that mini growth spurts occur at irregular intervals. Lack of cross-correlations between weight and lower leg length indicated that mini spurts in weight gain do not coincide with mini spurts in length gain even when considering lag times of up to 10 weeks. Short term changes of weight gain and lower leg length gain in healthy children show no temporal association.
KW  - knemometry
KW  - short term growth
KW  - mini growth spurts
KW  - lower leg length
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1127/anthranz/2020/1237
SN  - 0003-5548
SN  - 2363-7099
VL  - 77
IS  - 5
SP  - 399
EP  - 403
PB  - Schweizerbart
CY  - Stuttgart
ER  -