Biomedical Research 2005; 16 (3): 161-170 Growth Standards for Urban Infants in a High Altitude Area of Saudi Arabia *Mohammed A. Al-Shehri, **Mostafa A. Abolfotouh, **Mohammed Yunis Khan, ***Luke O. Nwoye *Department Child Health, College of Medicine, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia. **Department of Family & Community Medicine, College of Medicine, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia. ***Department of Physiology, College of Medicine, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia. Key words: Infants, high altitude, growth parameters, Abha, Saudi Arabia Accepted July 27, 2005, Abstract There is a need to establish up-to-date growth standards for use in assessing the adequacy of children’s growth in every population, especially those with peculiar environmental chal- lenges. The purpose of this study is to update growth reference values for the normal population of urban infants (0-24 months) from the high altitude area of Southwestern Saudi Arabia, and to compare these values with the current international standards established by the US Na- tional Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Anthropometric measurements of weight, length and head circumference were obtained from 5,426 healthy, well-fed infants of both sexes, ages 0 – 24 months, drawn from all socio- economic strata in Abha, Saudi Arabia in a cross-sectional study conducted between March 1998 and December, 2004. Values were corrected for age in the form of centile bands, and compared with the NCHS standards. Then, 5 th , 10 th , 25 th , 50 th , 75 th , 90 th and 95 th local per- centiles were calculated from such values using the frequencies procedure. centile curves of wt/age, length/age and HC/age. Abha infants of both sexes are significantly lighter (p<0.0001), shorter (p<0.0001) and have smaller head circumferences (p<0.0001) than NCHS reference values. About 77.5%, 54.4% and 73.1% of infants fell below the 10 th centile for weight, length and head circumference respectively. This study establishes current and generally applicable growth reference values for the high altitude urban infants of Aseer region to be used in infant growth monitoring and promo- tion. Introduction The physical growth of children provides an excellent measure of their health and nutrition while the average values of their heights and weights reflect the state of a nation’s public health and the average nutritional status of its citizens [1]. Furthermore, growth assessment plays an invaluable role in pediatric practice, not only for epidemi- ological purposes but also for the follow-up of childhood diseases. A worldwide variation in human growth has been well documented and several studies have shown significant differences in the growth rates of children from different populations due to differences in their health and nutritional status, environmental conditions and genetic makeup [2,3]. It is therefore essential that growth reference values be established for every country. In all populations studied, but especially in developing societies, secular trends in children’s growth and develop- ment have also been observed i.e. the tendency towards improved growth and earlier maturity in later generations of the same population as health systems nutrition im-