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Height varies with age, and it varies with historic time. Final height is determined by endocrine parameters and genetics, by nutrition and health, by environmental factors, by birth weight, early growth, BMI, and developmental tempo. European populations of the 19th century were short, but their shortness did not result from growth impairment at all ages. In those days, shortness was mainly due to a significantly blunted adolescent growth spurt. New modelling approaches suggest an independent regulation of adolescent growth and final height: the target for growth and final height appears to be set by the community. In order to test this hypothesis, we formed a geographic network of Switzerland consisting of 169 nodes (district capitals) and 335 connecting edges (roads), and investigated military conscript data obtained between 2004 and 2009. Average height of Swiss military conscripts was 178.2 cm (SD 6.5 cm). But conscripts from first order neighbouring districts were more similar in height than expected. Short stature districts have short, tall stature districts have tall neighbours. We found significant height correlations between 1st (r=0.58), 2nd (r=0.64), 3rd (r=0.45) and even 4th order neighbours (r=0.42). It appears that tall stature communities generate tall people, short stature communities generate short people, and migrants orientate towards the new height target of their host population (community effect on growth).

Aim: National European growth references differ. We aimed to convert (harmonize) currently used charts into a single unified interchangeable LMS format for each European nation., Methods: Nine currently used national European growth references from Belgium (2009), France (1979), Poland (2001), Sweden (2002), Switzerland (1989), the UK (1990), Italy (2006) and Germany (1979 and 1997) were harmonized and compared with the international WHO child growth standards and WHO growth reference data for 5-19 years., Results: European growth charts can be harmonized. The approach appears useful as height, and body mass index (BMI) is inappropriately represented by WHO references. European height references exhibit warping when plotted against the WHO reference. The French appears too short, the other Europeans too tall. Also, the BMI is not appropriately represented by the WHO references., Conclusions: Harmonizing references is a novel, convenient and cost-effective approach for converting historic and/or incomplete local or national growth reference charts into a unified interchangeable LMS format. Harmonizing facilitates producing growth references 'on demand', for limited regional purposes, for ethnically, socio-economically or politically defined minorities, but also for matching geographically different groups of children and adolescents for international growth and registry studies., (© 2011 The Author(s)/Acta Paediatrica © 2011 Foundation Acta Paediatrica.)

The present investigation characterizes common growth tracks in pre-pubertal children. Growth tracks denominate areas of probability within which subsequent measurements of the body height (or body height SDS) of a healthy individual will predominantly be found. Growth tracks are defined over several years and they are insensitive to the timing of measurements. The concept of growth tracks was developed to improve separating aberrant patterns from normal growth. Longitudinal data on height were obtained from six large national growth studies, performed at Berkeley, USA, Jena, Germany, Lublin, Poland, Paris, France, Prague, Czech Republic and Zurich, Switzerland with a total of 515 healthy boys and 532 healthy girls. Four hundred and two series of annual height measurements were available in pre-pubertal boys (aged 3-11 years), 416 series in pre-pubertal girls (aged 3-10). Body height was converted into height SDS. Thereafter, average personal height SDS was determined, and subtracted from height SDS, resulting in individual series of residual height SDS. These were sorted by cluster analysis and distributed into groups (clusters) according to similarity or dissimilarity (squared difference). We identified similar clusters, and named them 'growth tracks'. We found five pre-pubertal male growth tracks, each containing between 4 and 37% of the boys. Twenty boys could not be assigned to either one of the five tracks. Very similar results were obtained in girls, with five pre-pubertal growth tracks also, each containing between 3 and 50%. Twenty-three individuals grew irregularly and could not be assigned. Growth tracks are narrow, with an average width between 12.1 and 14.8% of the SD of body height. Most children exhibited almost horizontal height SDS patterns. Others showed linearly declining, rising, or intersection -shaped patterns. None of the patterns were predominantly found in particularly short or tall children. Preliminary data support the practical advantages of the concept of growth tracks.

Distance standards of height (growth charts) tend to get out of date and must be actualized from time to time. The aim of the present meta-analysis was to investigate characteristics of the cross sectional incremental pattern of body stature, evaluating the possibility of generating distance standards of height without the need for extensive de novo measurements. In view of the differences in growth in early and late childhood, we divided the total period of child development into the period between birth and the age of 6y, and between 6 and early adulthood (15y in females, 18 y in males). With respect to birth length, we meta-analysed 50 European and US American growth studies; with respect to growth in early childhood, 14 studies were analysed; and with respect to growth in late childhood, we meta-analysed 40 male and 51 female growth studies, from 14 European countries and the USA. Variations in body stature were meta-analysed in very large data samples, including the 1992 German birth cohort with more than 500 000 measurements of newborns, 10 000 measurements of 2-y-old German children, more than 500 000 measurements of German school children, and 6 large growth surveys of Japan and Czechoslovakia, with altogether more than 24 000 000 measurements. We found a rigid pattern of cross sectional body stature increment between birth and early adulthood that could be expressed by age-specific linear regression coefficients. Body stature was found to be related between sexes. Male birth length correlated with female length (r = 0.933, p < 0.001, slope = 4.62, intercept = 0.89), stature of 6-y-old boys correlated with stature of 6-y-old girls (r = 0.96, p < 0.001, slope = 1.05, intercept= -6.75), and stature of 18-y-old boys correlated with stature of 15-y-old girls (r=0.96, p < 0.001, slope = 0.90, intercept = 2.85). The developmental pace was also strongly related in both sexes. In conclusion, age-specific linear regression coefficients can be utilized synthetically to generate distance standards for height (synthetic growth reference charts). Synthetic growth reference charts can help to actualize current growth charts without much additional effort, and they may also be used for populations for which autochthonous growth standards are not available.