Secular trends in growth among urban Brazilian children of European descent.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss a significant secular trend in stature and weight in an urban Brazilian population. METHODOLOGY Anthropometric measurements of 7878 children and adolescents from São Paulo, Brazil, obtained in 1997/98 were compared with data from a previous study carried out in 1978. Both samples include children of middle-class urban families of European ancestry. MAIN OUTCOMES AND RESULTS Comparisons between the two samples reveal strong positive secular trends in both height and weight. Furthermore, the 1997/98 sample shows no growth deficits in relation to the WHO/NCHS international reference. CONCLUSIONS The positive trend can be explained as the result of economic development and improvement of social indicators, while the absence of growth deficits, contrary to what is reported in other studies carried out in developing countries, follows from the common genetic background of the Brazilian sample surveyed here and the US sample which is the basis of the NCHS/WHO reference.