Abstract

FREIRE, Fábia et al. Somatic growth of brazilian children and adolescents with Down Dyndrome. Rev. bras. crescimento desenvolv. hum. [online]. 2015, vol.25, n.1, pp. 102-107. ISSN 0104-1282.  http://dx.doi.org/10.7322/JHGD.96800.

INTRODUCTION: growth as a significant indicator of child health has been widely studied. However, the number of studies regarding this indicator in children and adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) in Brazil is still limited OBJECTIVE: the purpose of this study is to analyse the somatic growth of Brazilian children and adolescents with DS METHODS: a cross-sectional descriptive study. The sample was comprised of 68 children, 37 boys and 31 girls with DS, from nine to eleven years old. The anthropometric measurements taken were : body weight, height and skinfold thickness. Children with mosaicism and severe heart disease were excluded. For statistical analysis, the value of p <0.05 was adopted RESULTS: increases in body mass, height and body mass index (BMI) were identified, according to increasing age for both genders. Regarding height, boys had higher values than did girls. However, at age of eleven , there was a slight inversion of the data because the average stature in girls was higher. Regarding body mass, there was a significant difference for boys at nine and eleven years old CONCLUSION: boys are taller than girls, with a slight inversion at the age of eleven years old. Further, it was verified that children with normal growth have behaviour similar to children with DS. Significant differences were observed in both genders in relation to BMI and body mass. However, there was no difference in relation to Tricipital and Subscapular skinfolds, as well as to BMI measurements

Keywords : growth; Down syndrome; body height; body weight and skinfold thickness.

        · abstract in Portuguese     · text in English | Portuguese     · English ( pdf ) | Portuguese ( pdf )