Birth weight reference percentiles for Chinese.

Li Dai,Shuangge Ma,Meng Mao,Xiaomei Ma,Qi Li,Jun Zhu,Ying Deng,Yanhua Li,Yi Mu,Changfei Deng,Yawei Zhang,Yanping Wang,Patricia Wei Denning

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0104779

Abstract

ObjectiveTo develop a reference of population-based gestational age-specific birth weight percentiles for contemporary Chinese.MethodsBirth weight data was collected by the China National Population-based Birth Defects Surveillance System. A total of 1,105,214 live singleton births aged ≥28 weeks of gestation without birth defects during 2006–2010 were included. The lambda-mu-sigma method was utilized to generate percentiles and curves.ResultsGestational age-specific birth weight percentiles for male and female infants were constructed separately. Significant differences were observed between the current reference and other references developed for Chinese or non-Chinese infants.ConclusionThere have been moderate increases in birth weight percentiles for Chinese infants of both sexes and most gestational ages since 1980s, suggesting the importance of utilizing an updated national reference for both clinical and research purposes.

Highlights

Birth weight for gestational age is a commonly assessed perinatal outcome
Perinatal and infant morbidity and mortality as well as future adult chronic diseases have been linked to Small for gestational age (SGA) [3,4], it is important to identify SGA in both clinical and research settings
The population in China accounts for one fifth of the world population and each year approximately 16 million babies are born in China [14], no national population-based reference of birth weight currently exists

Summary

Introduction

Birth weight for gestational age is a commonly assessed perinatal outcome. Small for gestational age (SGA) is defined as weighing less than the 10th percentile of birth weight and is an important indicator of intrauterine fetal growth restriction (IUGR) [1,2]. Since gestational age-specific birth weight varies among racial groups [5,6,7,8], nation-specific birth weight references have been developed for several countries [1,9,10,11,12,13]. We used data from the largest National Population-Based Birth Defects Surveillance System (NPBDSS) [14] to construct a national reference of gestational age-specific birth weight percentiles for Chinese born between 2006–2010

Methods

Results

Conclusion