Growth standards for children's weight of 12 ethnic groups in Myanmar and Thailand

Abstract

The growth status of children is influenced by many factors, and especially differences in ethnic groups has a large. If possible, it would be ideal to evaluate children's growth and nutrition based on growth standards specific to their particular ethnic group. We present the result of our scientific research in Myanmar and Thailand ; Growth Standards for Children's Weight of 12 Ethnic Groups in Myanmar and Thailand. This research was carried out as part of two large-scale research development projects : Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's “International Cooperation Initiative” and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science's “Asia and Africa Science Platform Program”.With this project, we selected 12 major ethnic groups, Akha, Chin Ho, Hmong, Karen, Lahu, Lisu, Thai, in Thailand and Burmese, Kayin, Mon, Paoh, and Shan in Myanmar, in the two countries and succeeded in creating standards specific to each group. To purpose of this paper, we used the LMS method.The LMS method and maximum penalized likelihood estimation yielded percentiles in terms of three age-sex-specific curves. For each age group and sex, age was assigned to the x-axis and standardized weight values to the y-axis, giving the growth curves in Figures 2∼19.As always, physical growth research is a response to a practical need such as the one demonstrated here, and is indispensable to both international cooperation, and international and humanitarian aid activities.